


out of this world

by flying



Category: Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Bad Guy Pitch, Black Ice - Freeform, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Good Pitch Black, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Lust, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Mild Smut, More tags will be added later on, Multiple Personalities, Nightmares, Outer Space, Plot Twists, Powerful Jack, Sexy Times, The Author Regrets Everything, War, and god knows what else, and sometimes nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flying/pseuds/flying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack thought that after the Nightmare King, he would have no more questions for the Man in the Moon. Unfortunately, he was completely and utterly wrong. Now, he has to figure out how to save Pitch's daughter from an untimely death, reconcile with his old nemesis (if shagging him can be called that), and ward off an ancient, galactic force bent on getting revenge against General Kozmotis Pitchiner and while they're at it, destroy all of Earth along with him. When he signed up to save the world yet again, Jack didn't know that he would be saving it from Dream Pirates, which he quickly learns aren't as fluffy and adorable as they sound. Pitch is certainly not being helpful, but then again, he's having an identity crisis. All the while, Jack's powers spiral wildly out of control, and he finds himself ...becoming Mother Nature?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Would You Like a Cup of Tea?

**Author's Note:**

> Well. Hi. I've always been meaning to write a RotG story. Just before you start reading, I'd like to warn y'all that I write when I want to write, so assuming that someone actually wants me to continue this, it may or may not happen as soon as you'd like. Blackice is so very cute, but I don't think I'm ready to write full-blown smut yet. Maybe later on I'll change my mind. It's likely. But this is rated Mature just to be safe. This is my first fiction here on Archive of Our Own, so yeah. Just wanted to point that out in case the following 6000 words or so sucks.

> “Scars remind us that the past was real.”
> 
> \--Shakespeare

* * *

**day one –**

After he woke up from some unsettling dreams, Jack Frost sat up, gasping for air, and clenched the cold sheets beneath his shivering body. Spirals of frost danced across his pale bed as if they sensed the fluctuating mood of their master. He took deep breaths and images of his dream – his _nightmare_ – flickered in his head. The dream was familiar to him. The Guardians had turned on him, they told him that he didn’t _belong_ and Jack had wholeheartedly believed because it was true that he didn’t – how could he _ever_ fit in with them? And he trusted them more than he did himself. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried to stop the dry sobs. Tears rolled down his white cheeks and hardened into ice. He hardly ever reacted so violently, but it had been so long since this had happened.

Jack frowned, his worry deepening and intensifying the crushing feeling in his chest. The last time a nightmare had found him was when -

Pitch. Pitch Black.  _Of course._

The seriousness of this event wasn’t lost on Jack, but he tried to be optimistic. Perhaps the years of isolation had damaged his soul more than he knew. Perhaps Sandy had been much too _tired_ to drive away the nightmares for one night, and relief washed over Jack. He could believe that because he knew that Sandman was the busiest of any of the Guardians. It might be true that it was odd. The absence of dreamsand shouldn’t cause a nightmare. But still – Jack wanted it to be true. He didn’t want _Pitch_ of all people – if he even was considered a person – to be back.

It constantly harrowed at him, pecked at his conscience no matter how much he tried to brush it off as nothing. Jack considered talking to the other Guardians about this, but something told him not to. He could imagine it now. The twinkle in North’s eyes could die out and he would stroke his thick beard thoughtfully. Sandy would project a flurry of images above his head. Tooth’s feathers would stand up in alarm. And Bunny. Bunny would polish his boomerangs nervously, as if that would rid the world of any trace of the Nightmare King. He had brought enough worry to his new friends.

But if he didn’t know, he would be restless for the entire day. He reached for his staff and felt the familiar wood underneath his fingers. He knew every curve and every knot on it like it was his own arm. Jack hooked the curve, the crook of it on a ledge protruding from the wall. A blast of frost shot out from the tip accidentally and iced the entire surface. Jack brushed his hair back with his hand absently, but the white locks fell back into place like usual. North probably wouldn’t notice anyways because Jack’s room in his Workshop was made of ice anyways. Suddenly, a strong draft blew the window open and then Jack knew what he had to do.

The wind whispered the answer to him and he wondered why he didn’t think of it first. He would check on Pitch’s prison. If all went well, it would only be a patch of dirt where grass couldn’t grow anymore. If not, well, Jack didn’t really want to consider that outcome. He really was very good at forgetting things, _especially_ if they were somewhat important.

He jumped up and the wind whistled underneath him, creating a gentle platform that lifted him to his feet. His blue eyes looked at the frigid landscape – snow everywhere, a blizzard on the verge of loosening all hell on the North Pole. Perfect conditions for travelling, at least for a frost spirit.

For a moment, as Jack descended from the bed, light on his feet, he felt a moment of hesitation. Should he? _Should he really_? The other Guardians would find the very idea of confronting Pitch ridiculous, especially if he wanted to do it alone. _But maybe_ , Jack thought. _Maybe I’m not a Guardian. Maybe I’m not one of them_. The thought stung, but the words rang true. Jack hated that it was true. He hated himself for making it true.

“So, wind,” Jack whispered, his breath creating fragile ice crystals in the air. “What do you think, old friend? Should we go check on Pitch?” The wind nipped at his heels like a skittish young horse. Jack laughed. It wasn’t hard to tell what the wind was thinking, even if it couldn’t speak. The wind was as good as a friend to him as any of the Guardians.

“Alright, alright. I know you’re excited, but get a hold of yourself,” Jack said, still grinning. “We’ll go on a little adventure together, just like old times.” He jumped on the windowsill, crouching, the fingers on his staff tingling like a homing sense. It was because, Jack began to realize, that anywhere cold and frosty was home to him. Which was why the North Pole was one of his favorite places to stay. In fact, Jack would have stayed there longer and more frequently if he didn’t think that it bothered North.

He pushed the window open wider until the temperature of the room dropped violently. The wind impatiently blew at him and soon Jack was a couple of inches away from being carried away on it. Jack settled and with ephemeral resolve launched himself out the window, limbs astray, whooping like a madman. The wind seemed to share his enthusiasm, its harsh gusts even wilder than usual.

“Let’s see what you’ve got today!” Jack shouted, somersaulting through the thinning clouds like an Olympic gymnast. The moisture froze on his body, but the high speed at which Jack traveled at made them fly off, leaving a trail of frozen shards everywhere that he went. He had forgotten what it felt like to let loose completely like this. Spending time cooped up in North’s Workshop had been nice for a while, until it became suffocating. Winter was free, so Jack was a free spirit too.

“Is that _all_ you’ve got? I’m disappointed,” Jack taunted, and a stream of air made snow hit him in the face without warning – _hard_. “Hey!” Jack protested. “I’m just having some _fun_.” The wind died and made Jack drop twenty feet in the air, just enough to send a thrill through his body. Jack laughed some more, and if he listened closely, he thought he could hear the wind laughing along with him.

Below him, he could see the small clusters of houses – the very definition of the suburban life. “How about let’s go bring some fun and cheer to children?” Jack asked, even if it was only the middle of fall. He would bring an early winter this year. The wind responded to his command, bringing him down in a death dive towards Earth.

His eyes began to water. Jack squinted because otherwise gales feeling like sharp knives would torment them. Even so, they obscured his vision until he was forced to rub at the salty droplets in annoyance.He felt a little dizzy from what seemed like a trip halfway around the world, only remembering small snippets of the vast world beneath him.

A woman raked her leaves into a pile on her lawn while talking on a cellphone frantically. “No William, _no_. What – what do you think you’re doing? You sat there and let him have full custody? I _can’t_ believe that I hired you as my lawyer. You know what? You aren’t getting a _penny_ of my money. Not a single penny.”

The worries of humans seemed rather irrelevant and small from this distance, not only physically. An ache tugged at Jack’s heart. He missed being human. The warmth. The people. His _sister_.

A child fell on the sidewalk and immediately burst into tears. Jack felt a protective bubble burst in his chest. He wanted to cradle the child, wanted to _comfor_ t him. But he was held back by fear. He knew that he would be unseen yet again and had no desire to bring that kind of dejection upon himself.

_Jaime believes in you_ , he reminded himself. _He sees you._ But then again, Jaime was and would always be a special case. As would Jaime's friends, the handful that still believed in him. He wasn’t sure if they still did. A couple of them had stopped, that he knew, because he had felt a stab to his heart every time one of them had. The first time it had happened, Jack had collapsed and scared North and the other Guardians half to death.

He reluctantly left, turning away until the little boy was almost out of sight. But he couldn’t help turning back until a sympathetic parent lulled the kid into small whimpers with the promise of cake and other comfort. A girl skipped towards them, face suddenly morphing into one of concern. His chest grew tight because he knew that it wasn’t his business to interfere, even if he was a _Guardian_.

But there was one thing that he could do. Jack concentrated and sparks gathered in the palms of his hands, he murmured to them and the magic in them concentrated until he could hold it no longer and it erupted into a mild snowstorm. He floated away, but not before seeing the boy and girl holding their hands up to the snow in wonder, half-smiling and not even knowing that they were. It was trivial, but it did something to smooth over the ache that had started centuries ago.

The wind picked up a more urgent tone, prodded him with intentions other than mere play. Jack peered down and saw a familiar forest glade. Jack didn’t really know if he wanted to go check it out, but if was already here, then he might as well. He was still ambivalent, but the wind was not.

Jack lowered in elevation towards the patch of dirt in the center of the clearing. He shivered for a second, but soon the absence of the hole under the rickety old bedframe became apparent. He let out a breath of air that he didn’t know he had been holding in. Pitch was still trapped in his tunnels, where he belonged.

But then why did he have a nightmare?

“You have any idea what’s going on?” Jack wondered out loud, half talking to the wind, half to himself. “Why – if Pitch couldn’t have done it – then who?”

“Yes,” the wind seemed to answer. “I do. I do have an answer.” It whistled and created a churning platform beneath Jack’s feet full of pent up energy.

“What is it?” Jack asked. The wind stilled seemed to gesture invisibly towards a certain direction – Jack thought it was roughly northwest, but he couldn’t be sure. Jack understood. The wind was asking for his permission.

“ _Show me_ ,” Jack commanded. The wind didn’t need Jack to tell it again. It whirled and blew so fiercely that Jack hardly coasted on its surface; rather he tumbled and bowled over and over, completely out of control.

“Whoa,” Jack said. The wind had never been like this before, had always went by Jack’s direction, but it wasn’t as if he was complaining. He liked to have a little _fun_. An idea formed in his mind.

“Hey wind,” he shouted. “Bet you can’t go faster than this.” Never to resist a challenge, they accelerated further, Jack and the wind, hand in hand. In jubilation, Jack raised his staff and a bolt of pure frost energy shot out, crackling and splitting the sky into two like lightning. Snow rained down, fluffy particles of cheer.

It fell onto parks and the roofs of houses, but as the scenery changed abruptly, onto that as well. That was odd. It was as if there grew a jungle just outside of the city, but not just any jungle. Vines and flowering plants sprang up along with lush undergrowth in chilly weather. The canopies of the tropical trees never seemed greener. Jack had to remind himself for a second that this was Canada, not the Amazon rainforest. He was glad it wasn’t, because from what he remembered, immortal Amazon warriors did not appreciate him causing full-blown blizzards, especially not in July. Jack winced. That hadn’t been the best of vacations. He had gone to go sightseeing and had left knowing he had almost been castrated.

It was small, threatened to be overwhelmed by snow, and on the edges Jack could see that the trees were browning. They were dying. And for some reason, he held that fact in importance, that this green oasis was fading and there was nothing he could do about it. It made him feel rather helpless.

The wind seemed to want him to go towards the jungle, and a part of Jack did as well – the _curious_ part. He reminded himself that this probably was dangerous, was nothing that he had ever seen before. Jack licked his lips. All the more to go and see what it was all about, how a jungle could ever survive in such a harsh environment.

The wind carried him down, and Jack ran towards it like he was going down a staircase, impatient to see what wonders it held. This had been one of the happier memories of the old days, not the people-walking-through-you part, but the exploring-like-Dora-the-Explorer part.

The wind died down and Jack landed on the ground. He expected it to be snow, or at least frost-ridden, compacted grass or something of the sort, but instead he dug his toes into dirt. Warm dirt.

“What happened here?” Jack said, completely in awe. It was even more impressive up close. The trees towered over him like the skyscrapers he had seen in this city once, downtown. Now that he was here, he could even more fully admire the perfection and the hard work that had gone into creating this place, this _haven_.

The landscaping seemed to fit together like pieces of a puzzle, the trees and the earth and the sky together in a symbiotic relationship. Jack wandered aimlessly into the heart of it, but perhaps not so aimlessly, for he soon saw the trees begin to weave together in an intricate structure resembling a house. His brows furrowed. Maybe not just a house – that hardly did it justice. It was more like a mansion, if that is, some sort of woodland spirit had decided to study the works of Postnik Yakovlev’s architecture.

The corners of Jack’s mouth twitched, because his friend North enjoyed nothing more than lavishing praise onto each famed Russian architect there ever was.

“Posterior Yako – who?” Jack had asked during the Christmas Eve feast, which all the Guardians began to grow tired of. North insisted on holding a feast for every single day leading up to Christmas for a month. Bunny, for one, had missed at least five of the gatherings, preferring to paint his eggs even as the Northern Lights lit up in the sky.

North had looked hurt. “ _Postnik Yakovlev_ , Jack. You are not knowing of the famous Russian architect? Saint Basil’s Cathedral, no?” Jack looked at him blankly. North swelled up indignantly, patted his belly, and continued. “Why, the _Tsardom_ of Russia – “

He had rambled on for what seemed like hours to Jack’s restless, fun-loving spirit, and just as Jack had been about to slump face-first into his eggnog, Tooth had taken his hand and had shaken her head, her vivid feathers smoothed back. “Don’t listen,” she had mouthed. “If you want to get out of this alive.” Another shake and exasperated look at North, ten minutes in and still going strong. “Every. Single. Year.”

The few bright memories he had with the Guardians were like flickering lights in his mind, contrasting with some three hundred years of darkness, and Jack held these close to his heart. He was afraid to lose them, afraid they would be stolen away, because he knew he didn’t deserve them and that it was only a matter of time before they would vanish.

As he continued further, Jack’s steps became more and more tentative. He felt as if he was trespassing on something that he knew nothing of and of which he had no right to. This was someone’s home, he realized.

Or at least, –

The interweaving branches were covered with dust, and the entire place gave off an air of disuse and abandonment.

– it _used_ to be.

But that had never really stopped him. He had broken into countless places where he hadn’t been welcome, including North’s Workshop a couple decades back. So what was stopping him here?

The wind pushed him forward, blowing some of the dust off the massive structure, which Jack thought to be over six stories tall. It was dwarfed by some of the other trees, but was impressive nonetheless. A door hung off one of its hinges, about to fall off. Jack moved it aside gingerly and crossed the threshold. It didn’t smell like something that hadn’t been lived in for a long time. It smelled faintly floral and fresh, like a warm spring day.

He felt as if he had been launched into an entirely new world, because in his three centuries of existence, Jack had never seen anything close to this. There was a table that seemed to grow out of the floor, trunks of trees twisting together to form the legs, broad leaves sprouting out from them even though it was dim.

He moved out of the living room towards another door. Peering inside, he saw a small bed, a nightstand, and an antiquated frame sitting on it. Jack leaned over and brushed the grime of many years off the glass. A young girl smiled back at him, looking like she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. She had butterflies in her hair and was wearing a dark green dress. He could see the shadowy silhouette of another person next to her, which was a perfect description; as when Jack uncovered the face, he started in shock. This face was a familiar one.

It was Pitch. Odd, because Jack would have imagined that had Pitch been standing behind _any_ child, they would’ve been screaming in terror, much less smiling. Maybe she hadn’t noticed he was there, as he was famous for his ability to sneak up on children. Even Jack knew that was a shaky theory.

Now that he looked at it, Pitch looked different. His face was less grey, his eyes softer, and he was smiling. Actually smiling, not that sort of fake grimace he did before. Jack had thought Pitch wouldn’t have been caught _dead_ smiling like that. Jack wiped the rest of the dust off with his sleeve and narrowed his eyes. That was weird. Pitch’s signature black scythe was golden. A bright golden to rival his eyes, to rival Sandy’s natural color.

He tapped his fingers on the nightstand absently and frost spiraled across the wood. This house was connected to Pitch. He turned away. There was something very strange about this house. And Jack wanted to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing he did.

With a last look at the sad little room that must have once been very special to someone, he grabbed onto his staff and flew out of the open window – and then promptly flew into a tree.

“Oof,” Jack grunted, falling backwards onto the soil, which cushioned his fall. He hadn’t seen _that_ tree before. It was as if it had unanticipatedly moved in his way. “Where did this come from?” he said, putting one hand on his forehead and the other on the tree to steady himself.

Maybe “this” wasn’t the right way to describe the tree. It seemed alive, at least more alive than the other trees. A faint green aura surrounded the tree and it seemed to simply ooze life. The bark was twisted and knotted. Jack traced a line on the trunk until it curved into a dent on the surface. A hard and cold metallic object met his fingers.

Jack pried it out of the hole with considerable effort. It was a locket, a dainty little thing, and Jack was surprised to see not even a little rust on its silver surface. He opened a latch on its side and it split into two, sprung open to reveal the same girl for the second time that day. Frost crystals spread across it and for some reason Jack did not know, he felt the need to remove them.

He looked up at the tree again, its branches spreading, outstretched far enough that it served as an umbrella for the entire house. “You were protecting it,” Jack said, not sure whom he was speaking to. “But…why? What’s so special about this locket? Who is this girl?”

The wind was silent for once, but he didn’t think it was because it didn’t know the answer. It was because the tree was _alive_. On so many levels.

The branches began moving, swaying back and forth until they began unmistakably reaching for Jack. He stumbled back in surprise and tripped over a tree root, falling hard on the ground. The green glow grew much stronger – Jack could see it much more clearly now that the tree was only inches away – and all of a sudden he was airborne, lifted more gently than he had thought he would be.

They stopped. And then the two thick limbs wrapped around Jack’s torso began recoiling in on themselves, sinking into the vast wall that was the trunk. Jack yelled in alarm, closing his eyes and waiting for a painful impact.

And then he was inside the tree. He could tell because it was damper and mustier than before. That, and a tree beetle fell on his head. A squirrel skittered down the trunk, digging into the bark. Jack walked in circles around the hollowed out tree, wondering how it could be alive if there was nothing inside of it. The wind could not reach him inside this room. Jack realized that he was on his own.

Steeling his resolve, he moved towards where the green light seemed to glow the strongest. Except it wasn’t exactly green now, but more tinged with gold. Like Pitch’s scythe, he thought errantly. And dreamsand. He walked into another cavern in the tree – it was like a house of its own – and the breath rushed out of him.

“You just love surprising me, wind, don’t you?” he said. “Okay – maybe I’m not on my own.”

In the middle of the room, on a round piece of wood, covered by blankets of leaves and flowers, with golden butterflies in her hair, was the girl. The same girl he had seen on the locket. The same girl that he had seen in the picture. The same girl that he had seen with Pitch. She had dark, wavy hair and a cherub-like face. She had a peaceful look on her face and rosy cheeks.

He shifted his weight nervously, waiting for something but not sure what he was waiting for. He didn’t want to wake her up, because she looked like a child – something told him that in this case appearances were deceiving and that she was practically ancient – and he protected children.

He approached her and sat on the edge of the bed, prodding a mushroom growing on the base of it with his bare foot. Jack turned back to stare at the girl, which he didn’t find so awkward since she was asleep. He was so focused on her that he didn’t notice the green tendrils resembling the tree’s aura creeping towards him.

“Whoa!” Jack cried, lurching backwards, away from the green, translucent light, almost touching the slumbering girl. He picked up his staff. “Get away from me,” he said, trying to sound confident. “Leave me alone.”

A bolt of frost shot out from the arch on his staff, but the glow didn’t shy away from it. Rather, it formed a vortex of green energy and absorbed it, only growing larger in size.

“This is bad,” he said, voice shaking. It was.

It formed a cocoon around Jack until all he could see was green light. Fear wormed its way into his very core. Jack felt his mouth opening out of his own accord, something flooding into his body. It was warm, but there was a dangerous edge to it, like the smell of an approaching thunderstorm.

_I am never going anywhere with you again, wind_ , Jack thought, but even his feeling of betrayal was muddled. He fell on his side, his senses dulled, and then he knew no more.

* * *

Jack woke up surrounded by a golden mass that he soon found, to his horror, was _moving_. He sat up, gasping and hundreds of the golden butterflies that were on the girl fluttered away from him. He held one of them in the palm of his hand, stroking its soft wings with his thumb.

He groaned. “How long have I been out?” There was no answer, but then again, Jack hadn’t expected one. Three centuries alone had at least taught him that, along with developing a habit of talking to himself.

Looking around him, he realized he was still in the tree, and that – a cold band on his overheating body – he was still holding the locket. The girl was still on her bed, in the exact position that he had seen her last, eyes shut. Jack wanted to say that he’d be back, but that was a promise that he didn’t know if he could keep.

Now, there were more pressing matters in his head. Firstly, how exactly to get out of this wooden prison. He decided to shoot some frost at the wall, just to see what would happen. Frost shot across the bark with a beauty that Jack had always admired about the crystalline structures. Nothing happened, except that it immediately began to melt like the tree was generating its own heat. Or rather, with a second glance back at the girl, she was. The green aura had vanished except for a thin layer that seemed to surround the child.

Jack took a few steps forward and put his hand on an empty place on the inside of the trunk. He focused on it, because something, some gut feeling told him to. “Open sesame,” he said jokingly, his fun nature appearing at inappropriate moments like always, always in the face of danger or oppression. To Jack’s shock, the bark contracted, a hole opening up in the side of the tree. Fresh air flooded in and Jack took a deep breath.

“I…didn’t know I could do that,” he said slowly, frowning bemusedly. The wind seemed to agree. “Does controlling trees fall under wintery powers?”

He climbed out from the hole and slid down to the forest floor. As soon as he made contact, he fell to his knees in a sudden wave of nausea, finally propping himself up with his staff. He felt strange, like he was overflowing with something, like his insides were churning.

“Nothing like finding Sleeping Beauty’s reincarnation and then getting possessed by weird green stuff, right?” he said, chuckling weakly.

He turned back to the hole and shifted so that he could see the girl through it. Jack slipped the locket on its chain around his neck, held his staff with both hands, and prepared to leave. But he felt like some other form of farewell was necessary.

“I’ll be back,” Jack promised, and then he was gone on the winds. “Take me home.”

The wind pulled him in another direction. “ _Hey_ ,” Jack protested. “What’re you doing? The North Pole is that way. You know, north?”

Exasperated, the wind continued in the same direction as before, and Jack followed because his friend rarely led him astray. Once, maybe. After today, twice. _Or maybe_ , he thought, the tree in the distance almost out of sight, _it wasn’t a mistake_.

“Okay, wind,” he said. “Show me… whatever you want to show me.”

They glided across mountainous terrain, sierras, and rivers to a faraway place that seemed rather random to Jack. He let himself be dragged along, but after an hour, Jack had had enough.

“If you’re just gonna take me somewhere and not tell me where, then why don’t we just head back? Bunny is never going to let me hear the end of – “ The trees cleared to form something else entirely, a large tunnel in the middle of a bare, rocky patch of dirt, a circle of grass around it. A bedframe sat over it.

“Wait, what?” Jack asked, eyes widening. “But th-that’s Pitch’s lair. If this is Montana, how…“ That was alarming. Either this was some sort of joke, which he didn’t think it was because Pitch wasn’t someone to be taken lightly, or Pitch’s tunnels had expanded a lot. Perhaps things hadn’t ended as nicely as he thought.

“This is _really_ bad,” he said, throat constricting. “If Pitch is back, I need to go tell the other Guardians.”

He was about to fly away, but Jack couldn’t help but to turn back and to hover in place indecisively. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked. A moment passed. “Let’s go check it out.” Jack dove into the hole like a peregrine falcon, the light of the sun soon replaced by that of dark.

Jack almost hit a pile of dirt, avoided it, and tumbled down the hole, completely out of control. He stood up, brushing off his sweatshirt and pants. Pitch’s home looked no different than it had years ago. It was damp and dark, there was dirt everywhere – and he meant _everywhere_ –, and the décor was nothing short of creepy. He crept closer, feeling the need to sneak.

_What if Pitch is still here?_ There had been a few changes made. The only light source, the dark globe that used to be the centerpiece of his lair, was stashed in a corner, lights still flickering, each representing a darling little child that believed.

His scythe was placed in a corner, covered by a sheet like Pitch couldn’t bear to look at it or something. Jack was about to uncover it when –

“Jack Frost.” The voice was threateningly silky and sent shivers down his spine just like it had done before. Jack whirled around, staff in hand, trying to keep from shaking.

Pitch was back.

And from the looks of it, he had enough power to open up the tunnels again, to give Jack a nightmare all the way at the North Pole.

“Well, I can’t say that you look different,” Pitch continued, his black robes dragging on the floor. He may have looked the same from afar, but up close, Jack could see that his face was more pallid, taking on an unhealthy air. Pitch studied his hands, a white teacup in hand, contrasting with everything around him that was, well, black.

“Would you like a cup of tea? I do believe I have some left.” Jack’s lips tightened. Now Pitch was just patronizing him. He wanted to retort, but his voice died out in the back of his throat.

Pitch continued. “Though I do believe that you would prefer it iced, but I think that you can add that yourself, Frost.”

“Pitch. You’re back,” Jack said, still in shock.He could take too much excitement in one day after all. “You’re – “

“Anything else _obvious_ to point out, Jack Frost? Or did you just come here to chat about how I’m _obviously_ here and whether or not you and your silly little Guardians can stop my _obviously_ dastardly new plan?” Pitch drawled in a bored voice.

Jack was speechless again.

“Still _ever_ so eloquent, aren’t you? Well then, shall we?” Pitch gestured towards his teacup and moved towards another tunnel without turning back to see if Jack was following him or not. The exit was still open. Jack sighed, cursed his curiosity not for the first time, and followed Pitch, the grip on his staff getting tighter. He still remembered the last time he had been alone with Pitch, when Pitch had broken his staff in half. He felt the vulnerability and fear once more, the exact same feeling he had when it had dropped down the chasm, clattered on the icy floor.

Pitch sat down next to a table and waved to another chair across from him. Jack stared. Light streamed in from a window on the roof. There was a kitchen, a table, an armchair and lamp in the corner. It was _almost_ cozy.

“So, Jack Frost,” Pitch said as Jack sat down hesitantly, clasping his long fingers together. “I’ve been _dying_ to know how you and your friends have been. Well, I presume, now that I’m out of business?”

Unexpectedly, Pitch sat upright and his head was forced up by an invisible force, as if under some sort of uncontrollable spasm. There was a moment of stunned silence. And then streams of shadowy figures streamed out from his open mouth, screeching and darting towards a tunnel, uncovering Pitch’s scythe in the process. Pitch coughed, shot up, and hurriedly covered it up again before Jack fully registered the entire thing, but he could have sworn that he saw _gold_.

Pitch’s face was drawn, and became even more pale than usual. The dark color seemed to be leeching out of his hair, turning more of a dark brown than the raven black it had been.

“My apologies,” Pitch said, a tight-lipped smile on his face. “I didn’t mean for you to see that. It happens rather often these days. I suppose it gave you quite a shock.”

“What…just happened?” Jack asked bleakly.

“Well, I guess you could say, in plain terms, I’m losing my touch.” Pitch was wry as ever, but something in his tone – something that threatened to become _ugly_ – told Jack that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

That didn’t stop Jack. “You – a Nightmare just –“

“Yes,” Pitch said, irritated. “I noticed. Anything else to say? No?” He sighed and combed fingers through his hair so that it became further disheveled. Jack suddenly saw very little of the evil, malevolent nemesis that the Guardians had fought against not too long ago.

Pitch studied Jack for a moment with his sharp golden eyes and Jack felt rather uncomfortable. His eyes traced the contours of Jack’s legs, his torso, and then his movements stopped. Pitch stiffened and his lips thinned.

“What is _that_?” Pitch asked, any color that he had in his face draining out as if he had seen a ghost. He pointed towards Jack’s neck.

Jack looked down. “Oh, it’s just a locket that I found.” Confused, he added, “Why?”

“What? Oh, but that must mean… But I thought that it had…? _Could it be_? Sera – “

Pitch was stuttering and he looked distraught and as wild as a Nightmare itself. Jack grew nervous because this was someone that he recognized, not like the Pitch that had just confronted him, but the Pitch that looked like he could attack at any second. Like he would at any moment call upon his army of Nightmare horses. He fingered the locket.

“Give it back,” Pitch gasped, but his face soon turned stony. “Get your _filthy_  hands off of it, Frost, and give it back.”

He stood up, reached for his scythe that wasn’t there, hand closing on air, and put his hand on the table for support. Jack backed up until he was against the wall of the tunnel.

“Pitch,” he said, hoping to snap him out of this mood. He should have known that Pitch hadn’t changed, though he had hoped. " _Pitch_.”

He didn’t seem to hear. Pitch dove for Jack, hand reaching for the locket. All that Jack knew was that he had to protect it, because it belonged to the girl sleeping in that tree. His staff was leaning against the table, too far away for him to grab onto it. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.

Jack shut his eyes tightly and waited for an inevitable tug on his neck, waited for the pain to come. His heart pounded in utter panic. Instead, he felt a rumbling beneath his feet and a strain in his chest. He opened his eyes, startled, just in time to see the earth in the tunnel collapse and form a dark shield in front of him, churning and moving him backwards in a protective spherical shell until he was ejected out into broad daylight.

Jack didn’t wait another second, as soon as he was outside. “Wind!” he called out to the sky. His voice traveled and echoed even though there was nothing to rebound off of. “The North Pole.” This time, there was no disobedience, no hesitation. He soared across the sky, faster than anything, leaving flapping birds behind in his dust.

In his haste to leave the dreaded place, Jack never saw that thunder had clapped behind him and lightning had struck, almost as if reacting to his anxiety, which he had never been able to call on before. He never saw that his staff had been left behind in Pitch’s lair and he hadn’t gone back to get it. He never saw that Pitch had watched the place on the wall for minutes after where he had disappeared, clutching at his heart and heaving for breath like Jack had stolen part of it and he _wanted it back_.

Back in the winding tunnels, under the rickety old bedframe, down in Pitch’s lair, the former archenemy of the Guardians took hold of a scythe that was anything but completely black, kicked aside a staff half-heartedly, and whispered a name softly, voice breaking.

_“Seraphina.”_

It was only one of the many things that Jack did not see in his flight to see Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, even if it did mean that he would have to sit through another insufferable pre-Christmas feast.


	2. Do I Frighten You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK GUYS I'M SORRY. REALLY SORRY.
> 
> Forgive the usage of all caps. And everything else in between.
> 
> I didn't mean to delay the posting of this chapter by this long, but you guys should start expecting this kind of procrastination from me. 'Cause I'm really bad at time management. I only started writing like two weeks after I posted the last chapter and then held onto it for another two or so. I can't even remember when I updated. I think that's a bad sign.
> 
> I'll make it up to you...somehow. Definitely not with this chapter; I was incredibly unsatisfied with it even after a couple rounds of edits.
> 
> That's a lie. I'll probably forget to make it up to y'all...so...disregard like half of what I just said. Does this make me a compulsive liar?
> 
> UPDATE: I completely forgot Jack had left his staff in Pitch's lair, so I fixed that. Other than that, there were no other major changes besides correcting several typos. Well, that was embarrassing. Just pretend that never happened.

>  
> 
>  "If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself."
> 
> -George Orwell
> 
>  

**day one, later** –

It took Jack a couple of hours to fly to the North Pole, not because of a deficiency in speed, but because for once, he couldn’t find the energy to break the spell of lethargy. Not ever had he found his usual cheer so far out of reach, not even when Bunnymund had forcefully weaned Jack off caffeine – and failed, he might add. He drifted across an entire hemisphere with an ease that surpassed most human transportation, yet was surprisingly pitiful for a magical frost spirit.

In retrospect, Jack decided that Pitch’s behavior had been nothing short of oddly spontaneous and out of character. The man – if he could be called one, because Jack wasn’t really sure _what_ Pitch was – never let Jack ruffle a single hair on his head, let alone lose his composure completely. If Jack had, according to Bunny, an endless well of annoyingness within, then Pitch had an endless ability to ignore it. Until now.

And there was something even more odd. When he had made his escape, it had been dark and musty and all a blur, but he was sure that it was almost as if he had _moved_ the earth. When he had signed up to be a frost spirit, he hadn’t known that dirt would included in his list of powers. As of late, all he had known he was capable of was making a few snowballs and shooting some frost.

The sunset streaked across the sky in a fiery palette of oranges and pinks, an ephemeral glow bringing a warm tinge to Jack’s cheeks and to the terrain below. The icy glaciers below him emitted a vast spectrum of light, the cracks between forming endless, gaping chasms that must have led to the very center of the earth. He was steadily approaching a grand, castle-like structure sitting on the edge of a cliff, the wind nudging his tired feet like the gentle buffeting of waves against the shore.

Wait, tired? Jack had never felt as tired as he did right then and there, though a good day of spreading snow days and cheer had left him moderately weary before. He felt as if he could barely hold the winds together, wild as it was. For a moment, a shade of worry stroked through his heart, like an Olympic swimmer, should he lose control and plummet from the sky.

Jack flew through the window of North’s Workshop, clutching his staff closely, still in shock. It was an old habit, to not use the main entrance. He had tried and failed to break into the Workshop for decades, and any competent criminal knew not to use the front door. After all, even before he had been abducted and shoved in a sack by them, he knew to avoid the seven-foot yetis lumbering around the North Pole.

“Jack!” someone called, most likely Tooth, as she was the only female Guardian. She gradually came into view, a fresh splash of blue and green against the red motif that patterned across the walls. “Where have you been? North has practically worried his beard off. Wait – what’s wrong?”

For a moment, total confusion struck Jack. Toothiana was easily the most perceptive of any of the Guardians, but even her motherly instincts that made her particularly tuned in to Jack’s emotions wouldn’t be that accurate. She was at least twenty feet away, maybe more.

Or perhaps, he realized, he hadn’t really given her a run for her money. Looking into a nearby window, he saw that his eyebrows were bunched together and that his mouth dipped down into a contemplative frown. He quickly straightened it out before Toothiana got any closer and frosted the window on impulse with his staff, as he always did when he got nervous.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” Jack said, lying through his teeth. He didn’t want to worry the other Guardians, and from what he had seen of Pitch, he didn’t think that the Boogeyman would be able to cause too much harm.

 _Because of me_ , Jack thought, and was surprised to find that he felt guilty. Pitch had been and would most likely soon be their worst nightmare, no pun intended, the very enemy that had caused the Man in the Moon to create the Guardians in the first place. But even he couldn’t ignore that the influence of the locket on Pitch had been nothing short of violent. Jack wasn’t used to having that kind of effect over someone.

Toothiana stared at him incredulously and pursed her lips. Her feathers shuffled back and forth and her wings beat a calm humming noise into the evening air. She opened her mouth as if about to say something and then closed it again. Her bright, multicolored eyes scintillated like mounds of gems - rubies, emeralds, sapphires all heaped together.

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “If you say so.”

This phase lasted no more than a couple of seconds, in which her feathers gave a momentary slump and her eyes crinkled in anxiety. It seemed a rather gross overreaction, but she and the other Guardians rarely saw Jack in a bad mood. Jack normally kept those mood swings to himself, but today he couldn’t find the motivation to do so. To them, he was the carefree Guardian of fun - no worries, no deadlines, just play and laughter. It had been true, but he wasn’t so sure now.

“Well anyways,” Tooth said, giving Jack a small smile. “North cooked the entire feast by himself; you know how he gets around this time of the year. Wouldn’t let the elves or the yetis touch a single thing.”

“Not even the radishes?” Jack joked weakly.

“Especially not the radishes.” Tooth looked at him. “I know you hate them, but just remember that North likes them, and that I don’t think he appreciates when you call them mushy and overcooked.”

Jack chuckled and Tooth continued. “Besides, he’d be just devastated to know that you missed out on one of his feasts. He knows how much you love them.”

Jack lifted an eyebrow. “Was that a joke, Toothiana?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I can joke you know, Jack. _Jack_. Stop laughing!” Seeing Toothiana’s mortified face only made Jack laugh more.

“Sorry,” Jack wheezed, leaning onto the brick wall for support and wrapping both of his arms around his sides. “It’s just that I always thought of you as prim and proper.”

Toothiana looked mortified. “I am not prim and proper. There’s a reason people call me the Warrior Queen.”

“Brush your teeth and don’t forget to floss!” Jack imitated, still laughing. “And you’re a fairy. Sparkles and wings and all. That has to earn you some points on the prim scale.”

“Hey,” she said. “Plaque is a serious problem nowadays. You’re lucky you’re a frost spirit and you don’t need to brush your teeth to keep them sparkling white. But every time I get a tooth from some child that hasn’t been conducting proper dental hygiene – “

“You know what?” Jack asked. “I don’t think I want to hear it.”

“Oh, Jack,” Tooth sighed. “No wonder Bunny says you’re insufferable.” But when Jack looked at her next, there was just the faintest hint of a smile on Tooth’s face.

They settled into a ephemeral silence, one that Tooth felt perfectly comfortable because, well, when you’re immortal, you start to run out of things to say after a few centuries or so. At least, that’s what she had thought until she’d met Jack - for a spirit that was now over four hundred years old, he was still as voluble as ever.

Jack was too caught up in his own thoughts to notice that Tooth had stopped flying and had stopped before the hall where all of North’s feasts took place. North probably delighted in these gatherings because very few days of the year did the Guardians meet up, even now. Usually it was just Jack. He had no better place to go.

It wasn’t as if Jack didn’t have anywhere to take up residence. If he really went on a vacation, , had the time to go, then he would go somewhere with the ideal weather - maybe Alaska.  It was just that he didn’t feel like it. Just staying in the Workshop made Jack go soft. Before, he had been able to handle his solitude, but when company was so eagerly offered - it was another matter altogether.

“Jack?” Tooth called, her bemused voice breaking his train of thought. “Watch out for the --”

“Oof,” Jack said and fell backwards in an undignified sort of way. He rubbed his head clumsily and gave the pillar he had just run into one of his best glares.

Turning back to Tooth, who had covered her mouth, eyes alight with mirth, Jack complained, “Couldn’t have warned me sooner, Tooth? What if I had knocked one of my teeth out?”

His tone was playful and teasing as usual, but a look of horror spread rapidly across Tooth’s face. She covered her open mouth and her eyes widened.

“I’m so sorry Jack,” she cried, voice shrill. “I wasn’t thinking about your poor teeth.” She flitted from side to side as she always did when she was feeling guilty.

“Well, that’s new,” Jack muttered. Tooth was always thinking about his teeth, and now that he had reminded her, she flew over to pry open his mouth and examine them again.

She sighed in relief and said, “They’re okay.”

Jack grinned, but with Tooth’s fingers in his mouth, it probably turned out as a grimace. He felt an infectious good mood spread into him. Sometimes the Guardians were unbelievably gullible, clueless, or earnest for their age- for crying out loud, they were twice as old as Jack -, but they cheered him up like no one else could.

Then she asked, "Hey, where's your staff?"

"It's..." Jack trailed off, because then he realized that his hand was painfully empty. "Shit," he muttered under his breath. He knew exactly where he had left it - and he was seriously considering leaving his trusty staff there because he didn't want to go back to Pitch's place.

"What's wrong?" Tooth asked again. 

"Uh, nothing," he said, a fake smile plastered on his face. "My staff? Oh, I just... left it in my room. Yeah. Just went out to throw some snowballs for a couple of hours and stuff. You know, the regular. Decided I didn't need it."

"Oh, okay," Tooth said, and that was the end of that.

“Jack!” a new voice bellowed. “And Tooth. Long time no see, friends.” His Russian accented voice was warm and deep, the type that you generally associate with hot chocolate and discussions by the fireplace.

“It’s been one day, North,” Tooth said, slightly cross. “And Jack almost lost a tooth because of your feast!” She said it like making someone lose a tooth was a capital crime.

“And what a shame that would have been,” Bunny said, hopping into the room, polishing his beloved boomerang. His expression was fierce as always; Jack got the feeling that Bunny hadn’t exactly forgiven him for the last time he had ruined Easter. Or the time before that. Or the time before that.

“Good to see you, Kangaroo,” Jack said in a tone that was anything but good-natured. He prepared himself for another round of banter.

Bunny bristled as always, trying to make his height of over six feet seem even more impressive, puffing out his fluffy, gray chest. “What did you say, Frost?”

“Bunny!” North cried cheerfully and pulled him into a giant bear hug. It didn’t quite work the same way it did for Jack, because Bunny’s feet were only lifted a couple of inches off the floor. “You have made it! How was trip?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the long-eared Guardian said without mirth. “Trip was good. The tunnels were safe. Weather’s good in the Warren. Let’s just get this over with. I have eggs to paint.”

“Now?” Tooth asked. “It’s months away from Easter.”

“I’m going to start early this year,” he explained, paw gripping threateningly on his boomerang. “Just in case someone decides to play a little practical joke again.” He stared pointedly at Jack.

North chuckled. “Jack will not play joke, will you Jack? He is Guardian now. Besides, is no matter. Easter is not as important as Christmas. Everybody is knowing of that.”

Bunny’s eyes narrowed and he began to argue, his Australian accent becoming all the more prominent when he was angry. Jack let the century-old argument wash over him like music. The history of it had began shortly after the dark ages, and hardly a year could go by without North and Bunny going through the skit again.

“Hey,” Jack whispered to himself a second before Bunny did, albeit in a stronger tone. “Easter is just as important as Christmas.” He had memorized the lines already. Maybe he should have become an actor instead of a frost spirit.

Jack shrugged and tapped an elf with his foot, covering its left side with a fine sheet of ice. The elf squeaked and fell over. Tooth had started on her job already, giving what seemed to be a pep talk to the cloud of fairies surrounding her.

“Where’s Sandy?” Jack asked absentmindedly, thinking again back to the reopened hole in the ground. The argument was just about ending; Bunny looked huffy, but like he had run out of things  to say. “Busy with his work?”

“No,” North said. “Sandy is sleeping. Lots of children were needing good dreams last night.”

Jack nodded without surprise because North’s feasts always took a general pattern. Tooth would work all night, Bunny would glare at Jack for hours on - his record was eight by now -, Jack would doze off, and Sandy would wake up at ten to give the children their good dreams, only to fall asleep like clockwork the next morning.

North, on the other hand, would make small talk for a couple of minutes, and then rush off to supervise the making of toys. No one could blame him, after all. Christmas was only days away.

What they did blame him for was calling them there every single night for the same old boring routine. Even the first year doing it, Jack was already bored. He couldn’t imagine coming every year like the other Guardians must have, half-heartedly supporting North in his dash to make Christmas a reality.

Right now, Jack was still worried. He needed to make the trip back to retrieve his staff - but then he would have to face an angry Boogeyman. 

Christmas may have been one of the best holidays in the eyes of the children, but for the Guardians, it was torture. Except for one large, jolly one.

North ushered them over to the table, a twenty foot wonder piled sky-high with foods of all kinds, or so Jack thought. Upon closer examination, it was all traditional Russian food.

North beamed and asked, “What do you think? Good? I try very hard this year to make a good feast for my friends.”

They mumbled praise in response, but even their replies that wouldn’t have fooled anyone were enough for North. The Guardian of Wonder looked every bit as happy as he had... yesterday. Or the day before. Or the Christmas before that.

“Enjoy!” he bellowed again, and then opened a portal to the lower level of the Workshop. Time was of the essence during Christmas-time for North, so much that he didn’t even bother taking the stairs anymore.

They all sat down, Bunny keeping a distance from Jack as to keep a close eye on him and Tooth nearby. Jack put his hand on the wooden table. Almost immediately, the wood began to shrivel and droplets of water that promptly froze came out.

Jack jumped up and shock, and Bunny almost hurled a boomerang at him in surprise.

“Anything wrong, mate?” Bunny asked carefully, looking as if he wanted an excuse to throw his recently polished boomerang at Jack.

“Nothing,” Jack said slowly. “Sorry. I’m just a little jumpy.”

“Yeah, well, at least you know how it feels now, mate. To have to be constantly at your paws in case something happens to your eggs. Or to the children.” Bunny had somehow conjured a hard-boiled egg and painted intricate patterns over its smooth surface. “Good thing Pitch hasn’t come back yet, eh?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, nervous at how close Bunny had come to the truth. “Yeah, it’s a good thing he hasn’t.”

“You’re one of us, now, mate. We aren’t the BIg Four anymore - should be called the Big Five.” Bunny smiled, or at least as close to a smile as the gruff Guardian could get. It filled him with such a wholehearted feeling for a moment that he felt ashamed,

Jack found it funny how each of the Guardians had accepted him so quickly as a member of their group. Even now, decades after the defeat of the Nightmare King, it was hard for Jack to adjust to their confined sort of lifestyle.

“You know what, Bunny? You may look tough on the outside, but you’re just a softy on the inside,” said Jack. Bunny looked irritated, but he didn’t reply.

He looked out the window longingly, snow whirling outside in a wild blizzard. He wanted to know what it was like to race on the wind day after day, seeing how many times around the world it could take him, sleeping whenever he got tired, creating snowstorms everywhere he went.

But now Jack had responsibilities - the children. Though he loved the little rascals with all his heart, it just wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t as if North and the others expected him to do anything, because he was Jack Frost. What else could he do but make snow days?

Whenever he made a child smile with the prospect of making snowmen and sledding, Jack felt the same sort of warm feeling inside his heart. But he also knew that, should another danger rise, the child’s life would be his to take care of. He had always hated responsibility.

And he still wasn’t believed in. Jaime and his handful of friends had grown into middle-aged people, seniors by now, and it was just hard to make adults believe. Jack could count on one hand how many human beings knew he existed.

It was different with North and the other Guardians. They had so many children believing in them that they hardly seemed to cherish the belief of each. Jack took whatever he could get. It was better than nothing, and he knew that nothing felt like. He knew all too well what nothing felt like.

It had been hard twenty, thirty years ago when the children had stopped believing in him. First Cupcake, then Monty, and gradually the rest. All but Jaime. Jack had expected it; after all, who would be so loyal to him as to hold steadfast in their belief for fifty years? Jaime had been a pleasant surprise, like a nice, warm pocket in his heart that was nice to have when he had forgotten it was there.

A warm, golden glow filled the room, and Jack snapped out of his reverie. Apparently, he had been daydreaming for some time, because Bunny’s eggs crowded the table already - either that, or Bunny had been practicing a lot.

“Hey, Sandy,” Jack greeted, yawning and stretching. “What’s up?”

The question was asked more out of habit and politeness than anything, but Jack soon regretted it. A multitude of images flashed above Sandy’s head, so fast and each emitting such a bright light that it was enough to give people a seizure. Jack recognized a couple here and there, but then the next image would already be present, shattering the possibility of having a cohesive message.

“Uh...sorry, Sandy. I’m kinda lost here. But I think somebody else might understand,” Jack said bemusedly. The other Guardians would be full-time translators for the Sandman if they hadn’t already been busy with other things.

Sandy seemed very excited about something and repeated his message again without complaint. He pointed to Jack’s neck. Jack looked down and saw the silver, ornate locket, seeming so fragile resting against his chest. The look on Sandy’s face - Jack could have sworn that the Guardian of Dreams looked like he had been reunited with an old friend. Or perhaps, seeing the brooding look begin to spread across a round, golden face, an enemy.

He began to gesture wildly in his excitement, images in sand appearing in and out of existence in the blink of an eye. Through the chaos, Jack could barely make out the face of a young girl, a tree, a locket, and what appeared to look like a spaceship.

“This is still about the locket, right?” Jack asked carefully. He wanted to make sure that he deciphered this right, because something on Sandy’s face told him that he would want to know.

Sandy was patient still, He conjured up one image at a time until it became somewhat clearer what he meant. First appeared the locket, there was no doubt about it; the very shape had been branded into Jack’s mind. Then a lightning bolt. A girl. And finally, there was the image of a looming figure that Jack recognized to be the Boogeyman.

His eyebrows furrowed in disbelief. “So you’re saying that the locket belonged to a girl.” Sandy nodded vigorously, urging Jack on. The little man looked ready to explode with pent up excitement as he bounced up and down, like the laws of gravity no longer applied to him.

So it belonged to the girl sleeping in the tree. Somehow, that didn’t entirely surprise Jack. It had been stuck inside the very tree that she was in, after all.

“And the girl knows Pitch?”

Sandy’s face was considering and he tilted his head to the side a little. Jack knew what that meant. So the girl knew Pitch, but Jack wasn’t entirely right yet.

He tried again. “So the girl knows Pitch, but not that well?” Sandy, this time, shook his head so hard that Jack thought it was going to disconnect from his shoulders. The golden Guardian procured an image of two people holding hands, one tall and one short. Then the same two people with the smaller sitting on the lap of the other.

Jack thought back to the cracked photograph that he had seen of a man that had looked so similar to Pitch and the young girl, finally connecting it to Sandy’s message.

“She’s … his daughter,” he said finally, and Sandy shot up and down triumphantly, creating an image of a bingo board above his head. It was amazing how detailed the miniscule sand sculptures could get, as if they had been carved out by the tiniest sculptor in the world.

“But how do you know this? Did you know the girl or something? Or did Pitch tell you?” Jack’s curiosity didn’t just stop there. He had a million more questions to ask. but the Sandman didn’t exactly seem like the right recipient. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to tell the other Guardians that Pitch was back yet.

There was a sorrowful expression on Sandy’s face, innocent and pure like that of a child. If North hadn’t told him otherwise, Jack would have never guessed that Sandy was the oldest of any Guardian. He had existed for thousands of years before he had become a Guardian.

In the final picture Sandy would make that night, Jack saw a figure that was unmistakably that of Sandy himself and a young girl sitting together. They looked so peaceful, the golden silhouettes dancing and revolving in that midnight air that Jack was taken aback for a moment.

“She was your friend.”

Sandy shrugged and nodded, looking very sad. Understanding hit Jack. The Sandman thought that the girl was gone, that Pitch’s daughter was dead. Contradictory words sprung to his mouth but he couldn’t bear to say them out loud.

He wasn’t even sure yet that the girl was the subject in question. Jack couldn’t connect the face of the sleeping child with that of Pitch, a nemesis that had sowed seeds of terror in every child across the globe since he had been only decades old.

Jack wanted to ask Sandy more, but he looked so tired and small that he pushed another question back down his throat and decided to stay quiet. It bubbled up anyhow.

“So, she’s dead, right?” Jack tried to confirm, ignoring a voice in his head that he was being inconsiderate and blunt. After all, if Sandy had looked so sad at just the mention of this girl, who was he to start talking about her hypothetical death?

Sandy didn’t look annoyed, thankfully. Most of the Guardians had insurmountable levels of patience; in fact, Jack would have placed a general stereotype that all Guardians were patient, had it not been for a certain Australian resembling Pooka. The golden man simply nodded once and turned away, golden sand floating above the palm of his hand.

Jack looked up as well, noticing only that Tooth and Bunny were nowhere to be seen, though the latter had covered half of the room with painted hard-boiled eggs. He sighed, brushed aside a few eggs, and placed his head on his arms, which were resting on the oaken table.

If he was a Guardian now, why did he still feel so left out? He still had difficulty telling them things that they should have a right to know, like the fact that Pitch was back.  It was like there was someone restraining him from inside.

Jack wanted to wait for North, but slowly his eyes closed and he drifted off, with the last thing that he remembered being golden waves of sand spiraling from Sandy’s hands out the open window towards awaiting children beyond.

* * *

**day two -**

Jack snuck out just after midnight, having not been able to sleep much after his short respite. He had woken up next to an uneaten feast, well, at least partially uneaten. Or perhaps an elf or two had taken a short break because around the food on each plate there were rings of  tiny nibbles.

He stretched out muscles sore from staying in one place for two long, as they always were after he rested. Though his mind and body were usually one, sometimes they contradicted; his mind needed rest occasionally, his body was always restless. Jack pushed himself up from off the table and mimed hooking thin fingers onto an ancient wooden staff. They closed on empty air.

He ran towards the nearest exit, wishing that the wind would be able to carry him even indoors like North’s snowglobes and Bunny’s tunnels. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The stone floor, with intricate, tiny carvings, bit into his bare feet, which were roughened from centuries of use. Jack didn’t see why people wore shoes.

Panting, he flung open a window; as the wind greeted him, blanketing his hair with layers of snow, he smiled. It blew that healthy white tinge back into his cold cheeks. And with the faint tinkling lights behind him from gentle candlelight, Jack slipped out into icy darkness.

This time, he knew exactly where he wanted to go. There was no ambivalence or indecision - no, he had already been given too much time to contemplate that. Jack usually went with his gut feeling, and right now its internal GPS was telling him to trace his way back down the very route he had taken not too long ago. That made sense - Jack Frost, part-time homing pigeon.

He let himself fall from the window, limbs flung out, knowing that he would be caught like a lightweight leaf in the wind. He somersaulted and twirled himself dizzy under the light of the moon - the Man in the Moon. The creator of the Guardians himself in all his glory.

Humoring himself, Jack let his thoughts wander, as they always did, going off tangents until he wandered light years away from where he had first begun.

 _If the last time Pitch came back, the Man in the Moon made me a Guardian_ , Jack thought, _then I wonder who’s gonna be initiated this time._

That was an interesting idea. It was impossible for Jack to have never met another spirit or something of the sort, but he didn’t know that many, and he wasn’t entirely sure how many existed. He had, of course, met the Big Four before he had become a Guardian, but it was only because they were some of the most famous immortals.

Jack knew about a handful of others that were popular in modern culture - the Groundhog, Leprechaun, Pegasus. They liked to flaunt themselves before humankind and had done so for so long that they had been embedded in its culture.

Some, on the other hand, liked to keep themselves hidden away. Jack had heard stories of seclusive spirits luring unsuspecting immortals and humans alike into their dark recesses, usually in caves or ocean abysses. The Man in the Moon hadn’t created all of them. Some were said to be older than the moon itself.

He soared, bursting into cloud after cloud, each a dark wisp barely illuminated by the glow of the moon. Moisture bit at his face and froze as he went higher, until he brushed them off with his sleeve. Jack was so high above the ground that the suburbs and cities below looked like twinkling lights on a Christmas tree. Though it was below freezing, he was so attuned to the weather that it felt as if it was seventy degrees and sunny, at least to normal people. Jack would have overheated in that kind of temperature.

He looked up at the moon, a thousand questions racing through his head. Why was Pitch back? And what did the Man in the Moon have to do with this. A gray smile on a shining white face looked back. Well, that was helpful - more silence. Though it wasn’t as if Jack had expected anything else.

Wind swooped through vortexes of space in between Jack and the ground, pushing him to new heights that almost made him dizzy. Thankfully, he wasn’t afraid of heights. That would be like an Olympic diver, afraid of water, or a chef afraid of fire. His job description allowed no room for that fear.

In this particular moment, Jack enforced no control over the wind; he simply flowed along it like a salmon in a river, able to swim upstream but unwilling to. It began to take him along a familiar path again, across valleys and rivers to a sight that was easy on the eyes. Montana.

Pitch’s little clearing arrived in sight, dark and foreboding in the lack of illumination. He didn’t have to tell the wind even once to set him down. By the time he noticed the hole, he was already descending towards the entrance.

He laughed nervously, air rushing out from his lungs in a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. “No turning back now, I guess, huh?” The wind was silent, as if it too felt the suspense pressing down on its shoulders. Well, he really did want his staff back. His hands felt naked without it, dangling by his sides with no stick to twirl.

It was funny how eager he had been to leave a couple of hours ago; if eager could describe the feeling he had experienced. It was more as if he felt as if a meeting with Pitch was inevitable, and that he should get it over with anyways. Now that his feet were firmly planted on the ground, he stared into the dark capillary spilling into a complex network of veins and arteries beneath, able to compose an extensive list of places he would rather be than there.

He prodded some earth with the bottom of his staff, watching as a small clump of dirt was dislodged, falling so far that Jack couldn’t even hear the thump that it most likely made. Unless gravity had somehow ceased to exist for a few seconds.

His resolve felt shaky. Jack stepped back a little until he wasn’t dangerously close to the edge of the hole anymore and considered his options, scarce as they were. He could either go back to the safety of the North Pole without anyone having realized that he had been absent or venture into a dark tunnel where unknown perils might await him.

It was an easy choice at first, until he realized that he would never get what he wanted if he didn't go in. His staff and some more information. And Jack Frost was a sucker for information. He had been tormented by the Man in the Moon, who supposedly had answers to his questions, for centuries. He had let the Guardians down when his memories had been at stake, contained in their little receptacles of teeth. Now he was about to give in to temptation once more.

Jack took a deep breath and before he could change his mind, he took a step forward and plummeted downwards, free falling to another universe below.

As reaching the ground began to seem a more probable event, Jack started to panic, thoughts racing through his head a mile per minute. He had fallen for more than a couple of seconds, at least, and his speed was only increasing. Though he was immortal - but not entirely sure he couldn’t be killed -, a couple hundred foot drop couldn’t feel all too good.

Oddly, the ground seemed to reach up towards him, reacting to his anxiety. It swelled up like the crescendo of a great musical piece, softened and eased his landing. It felt as if he had fallen onto the world’s largest pillow rather than dirt and rocks.

He looked around and even in the dim light he noticed it, most likely because it radiated light itself.

“Whoa,” he said. There, leaning against the wall was a golden scythe, as if that name did it justice, shimmering like Sandy’s dreamsand. It was one of the most impressive weapons he had ever seen. It made his staff look like a child’s toy.

He lurched forwards without actually noticing, drawn to it like a magnet. Of course, Jack had seen Pitch with his scythe before, the two of them making quite the intimidating team. But it had changed entirely. The edges weren’t as jagged as before, nor as rough and unformed. The reformed scythe before him could only be described as majestic, the edges a soft metallic color, light and versatile. It somehow utilized the small amount of moonlight to the maximum, shooting off rays of glory in a three-yard radius around it.

It looked entirely out of place. Not like something that would belong to Pitch Black, the Nightmare King, the Boogeyman, or whatever else he was called. Jack only had one name, for all that he knew. Maybe the scarier you were, the more names people decided to give you.

Now, where was it? He looked around for the staff, and then breathed in relief. It was exactly where he had left it, only now it looked like it had been flung to the side, like Pitch had been too disgusted to even look at it anymore. He picked it up and said, "Thank god. Now I just need to get out of here."

“Frost.” The voice was cold and without humor. “Decided to show up again?”

Jack whirled around on his toes, reaching for his staff and pointing it directly at the figure behind him. “Do you always sneak up on people?” It seemed like the wrong moment to ask the question, but he was infamous for speaking without thinking.

“It’s habit.” Pitch seemed determined to make his answers as short and concise as possible, as if he wanted to get the very conversation over with.

Speaking of Pitch, he looked the worse for wear. There were dark bags under his face, underlining his wild eyes with smoky, expressive marks, and his hair flew out in every which direction.

“Yeah, that’s cool. Being the Boogeyman and all, I - I get it. So, yeah,” Jack shuffled his feet around awkwardly, abashed at have being caught. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected it.

“You know,” he said finally, will collapsing under Pitch’s intense golden stare. “This was a really bad idea. I shouldn’t have come. I’m just gonna go now. Glad to see you’re okay. Um… see you later, I guess.” He was about to turn to leave when Pitch clasped a firm hand around Jack’s wrist.

“Wait,” Pitch said. “So eager to leave, are you, Frost? Do I frighten you?”

When Jack got a good look at him, Pitch was almost smiling. He could see it in his golden eyes, some brand of good humor struggling to push through that somber mask. It was a mocking, sarcastic glow that infused Jack with a smidgen of hope.

“No,” Jack stated. He thought he sounded very much like a rebellious child. “You wish. I’m not scared of you.” A part of him wanted to say, “Not when you’re like this,” but he pushed it back down his throat.

“Lies,” Pitch replied, voice becoming softer. “Why are you lying, Jack? I can smell your fear from a mile away. It’s so distinctive I couldn’t have mistaken it for that of anyone else. You fear me. You fear what I might do to you, to your Guardians.”

“And more importantly,” he continued, “if you fear me so, why did you come back? I suppose it makes complete sense in your mind - someone threatens you and you come closer. I’m no Guardian, Jack. I’m not a big jolly ball of wonder, nor - gods forbid - a fluffy little rabbit.”

Gods? Jack thought, musing over Pitch’s word choice. The notion left his mind quickly in light of other matters - namely, delivering a scathing retort.

“You think I don’t know that?” Jack asked incredulously. “It’s not as if I just forgot entirely about what happened fifty years ago - when you tried to take over the world. I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, I agree,” Pitch said, beginning to circle around Jack in a way that made him feel like prey. “You’re something else entirely. So tell me Jack, why did you come back? You knew I wasn’t exactly going to welcome you back with open arms.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?” Jack laughed breathily. The reply sounded shaky even to him. "Plus, I kinda wanted my staff back." He waved it draw Pitch's attention there.

“Really?” Pitch said, leaning in closer, so close that Jack could smell him - a musty scent of sandalwood and bay rum. “I don’t believe you. If you wanted to keep me close, then you could have done that thirty, forty years ago. I suppose that is the question - why now, Jack Frost?”

“So I was curious,” Jack said, something indignant in him firing up. “Sue me.”

“Well then, indulge my curiosity and give me an actual answer,” Pitch said resolutely. Jack saw no way to sway him otherwise.

“Fine. I don’t know how to explain it,” he said reluctantly, as Pitch raised an arched eyebrow. “I was curious. And I felt kind of sorry for you, locked up in that hole for fifty years. All I saw was the new hole that opened up in Montana when I was flying cross-country yesterday --”

“A new entrance opened up?” Pitch asked, suddenly looking very interested. “I wasn’t aware of that. That’s how you got in, correct?”

“There are more?” Jack said, feeling alarmed. “How come I - we - haven’t noticed any of them? I’ve practically been to every spot in the United States in the last fifty years.”

“But not all at once,” Pitch answered. “Maybe over the course of fifty years, but in perhaps one year, you couldn’t possibly have traveled everywhere. And not all of them are in the United States.”

He started laughing. “What is it?” Jack asked, abruptly self-conscious.

Pitch rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, it’s just that it seems a rather stupid thing to do - to risk your life because you felt sorry for someone. What if I had attacked you,” he said, moving behind Jack, “or kept you captive here?” Jack could feel Pitch’s hot breath on the back of his neck.

He couldn’t answer, couldn’t move, too aware of Pitch’s proximity. A frost spirit, frozen to the spot. The irony of it was apparent to Jack.

“You are too trusting of people. Only seeing the best out of them, blind to everything else,” Pitch said. “If I had really tried to hurt you, do you really doubt that I could?”

“But you’re weaker now,” Jack blurted out, only wanted to rid of the uncomfortable air that surrounded them. He felt somewhat suffocated. “The shadows - they aren’t obeying you anymore.”

Pitch’s lips tightened. Jack got the feeling that he had said something wrong, but before he could make amends, Pitch spoke. “You’re right. For such a naive frost spirit, you can come remarkably close to the truth.” And that was the end of that matter, or so Pitch thought. Jack couldn’t just let it rest there.

“I - I want to know,” he added.

Pitch stared at him, eyebrows raised. “Pardon?”

“Why are you weaker now? What happened to you while you were trapped in here -or  is it something that I did? Because the last time I came, that shadow came out of you - “

His ramble was cut off with an impatient remark. “It isn’t as if you could have done this, Frost. Don’t place yourself in such high regard; you don’t have the ability to do anything. If I were to attack you and your pathetic Guardians again - “

“You would lose,” Jack finished, cutting him off.

Pitch’s mouth tightened. “Well, aren’t you obstinate as hell.”

As if hadn’t heard that line before. “Anything else I don’t know?” Jack asked, voice adopting that same satirical monotone it did every time he spoke to Bunny.

Jack looked down and saw a shimmering glint of metal, and - remembering the locket that he had forgotten to take off - he went out on a limb and shrugged it off, holding it towards Pitch in an outstretched palm. Pitch’s golden eyes widened. In the very back of his head, Jack wondered if he had gone too far. That had become a habitual feeling.

“But this can, right?” Jack said, recalling how Pitch had reacted to the locket at first. He looked like that right now, mouth slightly open, as if he couldn’t believe what Jack was doing. He did not stir for a while, then took the locket from Jack with shaking hands. His trembling fingers brushed against Jack’s for the briefest of moments. They were so warm that they sent a shiver snaking up his back.

Pitch grasped the locket so tightly that his knuckles turned white, enveloped it into his long hands so that only a lean cord dangled out. If he hadn’t known Pitch, then he would have said that the man was close to tears. Pitch didn’t seem like the type to cry.

He swallowed, seemed to compose himself, and murmured something that Jack could barely catch as they danced through the air on a whisper. “Thank you.” He probably hadn’t meant for Jack to hear. The Nightmare King, actually thanking someone. What that would do for his reputation.

It was as if - Jack realized - the locket was alive, like a long-lost friend  that Pitch had not seen for centuries, finally return to its rightful home. If Pitch made a fist, the locket seemed to fit perfectly into the seam between his fingers and palm, as if he had manufactured the trinket himself. Or perhaps he had. Jack was way out of his depth here.

“Come in,” Pitch said suddenly, breaking Jack’s train of thought. “It seems we have a lot to discuss.”

This time, there was a definite, grateful - albeit small - smile on his face. The entire air seemed to warm, as if Pitch had magically lifted the dark atmosphere. Jack could suddenly notice the finite details of the lair, realizing that it wasn’t the average villain’s hideout. On the walls, there hung painting after painting, the material cracking, all dating back to the Renaissance or earlier still. There were built-in bookshelves on the walls, stocked with books in languages he could not read. Candlelight illuminated the dimmest areas of the room. It was odd that he hadn’t noticed it before.

“You’ve been redecorating,” Jack said in wonder. No longer was it the same dreary place, littered with rusted birdcages, the centerpiece a dark globe. “It looks nice.”

“Oh, I’ve tidied up here and there,” Pitch said, brushing off the remark with the air of a monarch. “It was getting rather unsightly. Wouldn’t do for visitors.”

 _He has changed_ , Jack thought, the doubt being erased from his mind.

This time, when he followed Pitch into the sitting room - having to take two steps for every one of his long strides - there was no preexistent fear in his mind. He wished he had been afraid, had turned back there, had never visited Pitch in the first place, for there was no diviner in the world who could have predicted what web of plots and secrets he would soon be plunged into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always for improving writers, read and then review, leave a kudos, bookmark this, or favorite or whatever else you can do that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Expect a chapter kinda soon...but not that soon, as I'm pretty exhausted from writing this one.
> 
> -flying


	3. Walk the Plank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack decides to give up on his childhood dream of becoming a pirate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys,
> 
> This is a pretty fast update for me - I guess y'all will have to get used to it, unless I miraculously start writing faster.
> 
> In return for putting up with my horrible update speed, this chapter is long, over 9000 words of absolute shit. I'd like to say that I know where this winding path I call a story goes, but the truth is I only know where it stops along the way. 
> 
> Anyways, have fun.
> 
> OH... before I forget, I added some stuff to the last chapter, so you guys can read the edits if you want. Just some misplacement of Jack's staff.

> “M'amour, m'amour
> 
> what do I love and
> 
> where are you?
> 
> That I lost my center
> 
> fighting the world
> 
> The Dreams clash
> 
> and are shattered-
> 
> and that I tried to make a paradiso
> 
> terrestre.
> 
>  
> 
> I have tried to write Paradise
> 
> Do not move
> 
> Let the wind speak
> 
> that is paradise
> 
> Let the Gods forgive what I
> 
> have made
> 
> Let those I love try to forgive
> 
> what I have made.”
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 
> “[this is where] the dead walked
> 
> and the living were made of cardboard.”
> 
>  
> 
> ― Ezra Pound, _The Cantos_

  
  


**Chapter 3:** Walk the Plank

 

He watched as Pitch straightened out the portrait, long fingers attaching themselves to the gilded frame with almost a loving air. It was a picture charmed straight out of a dream, a horse made of starlight, dancing amongst the sun and the moon.

It wasn’t the same as the nightmare black horses that Pitch had conjured before. This horse was the steed of a king. It looked as if it were taken straight out of a fairytale, in one of the books that Jack often amused himself with when it was left lying on the night table of a slumbering child.

“Who’s that?” Jack asked, habitually thinking out loud again.

Thankfully, Pitch was not too annoyed, or at least he didn’t seem that way. Jack couldn’t really tell - his voice was too neutral. “He was my horse - Allegro.  The Man in the Moon created him out of his moonlight for me - it was a long time ago.” His eyes grew misty, like he was looking back to another time, an image that Jack could not see.

Jack kept on staring, transfixed by the picture, trying to ignore Pitch’s stare, molten gold swirling around in his irises. He did not look at Jack with hatred, annoyance, or anything else really. His expression was meticulously kept clear, free of emotion. Nonchalant. Like he barely noticed Jack was there.

It suddenly made sense to Jack. “Is that why you like horses?” Pitch gave him a look. ,”‘Cause, you know, you made horses out of your nightmare sand instead of - you know - something scarier. Not that they weren’t terrifying, because they were,” Jack finished lamely.

There was a moment of silence; nothing could be heard but the haunting echo of water dripping, like the wail of a tortured soul. Pitch suddenly said, startling Jack, “You are - how should I put this? - an anomaly, Jack Frost. Like a puzzle with half of the pieces missing. Just when I think I can figure you out, you do something unexpected.”

“I’m puzzling?” Jack asked, incredulous. “Do you have any idea what you seem like to me. I mean, if I’m hard to figure out, you must be like the king of confusing or something like that. Do you do that on purpose or is that just a side effect of being Pitch Black?”

_Is he still Pitch Black_? Jack thought in the back of his head, but decided not to voice it.

“A side effect, I suppose,” Pitch said, eyes questioning, probing Jack - his face, his blue hoodie, his hands hanging by his sides. He did not look pleased to have Jack in his home, but at least his outright opposition had faded away.

“It’s interesting that you should find me confusing,” Pitch continued, as they turned yet another corner, of which he had many. “I make sense, at least, in my head.”

“In your head, maybe,” Jack muttered. If Pitch had heard, he made no sign of it. The long winding path into the sitting room seemed neverending, but there had been some obvious changes to it compared to decades ago.

The walls were no longer only dirt, but stone, layers upon layers of multicolored rock with glimmering lights that he realized were precious jewels wedged in between the cracks. It rose up into awe-striking arches that must have at least protruded above ground because Jack could barely see where they ended. The floor was marble and torches hanging from the walls. An entire wall was covered with swords and associated weapons, as well as ornate suits of armor. Slabs of stone covered  the walls in some areas, boasting of detailed mosaics depicting wars and times of peace, like an extensive timeline spanning yards across.

Jack felt as if he was walking through a medieval castle, marvels in every orifice of the structure. The architecture, though not as grand, was easily comparable to that of the Palace of Versailles or some other masterpiece in Europe.

“Whoa,” Jack wondered out loud, completely in awe, because surely even Pitch could not have built this by himself in only fifty years. “

“I believe you haven’t,” Pitch said, voice mild.. “It isn’t as if you exactly explored the last time you came. You only entered the west wing. We’re in the east right now. But I’ve made a few changes here and there.”

“Wait… a wing?” Jack asked incredulously. “You mean like one of those really old castles they have in England and stuff?” He poked an intricate vase wrought out of shimmering, otherworldly metal. It made a sharp, bell-like sound, clanging against the stone pillar it had been perched on.

“Yes,” Pitch answered simply. “In a way, though really old castles they have in England hardly compare to this - at least in its former glory. I’ve downsized.”

The walls began to curve outward, their organic shapes like those in a Spanish villa, widening into a large sitting room with plush, oriental carpet between Jack’s toes. He wriggled them. Glass had been shaped into the forms of stars and the moon, miniscule windows, so that when natural light streamed in, it gave off the illusion of a constant starry night Each seemed so delicate that Jack could break them just by throwing a snowball.

“Sit down, Frost.” Pitch said, his voice becoming curt and business-like. All he needed now was a suit, tie, and a condescending demeanor. The latter was at least half-taken care of. “We need to talk.” He sat down on a sofa and Jack sat on the artistically carved wooden chair across from him. A small coffee table sat between them, of which there sat a plate of cookies.

Cookies. If this was a dream, he was certainly going to go back to Pitch’s lair in real life and laughing at him for being a baker. Or perhaps he had walked into some random bakery and stole them. Pitch Black, Boogeyman, hobbyist burglar. It was easy enough to picture, Pitch in a ski mask holding some cheap, second-hand gun.

“Now,” Pitch said, his eyes so piercing they seemed to stare within Jack’s very soul. He folded his hands together and waited, as if preparing himself for what he was about to say. Or maybe it was just for dramatic effect. Jack wouldn’t know.  “I have a few questions for you, Frost. Where did you get this locket?”

He held up the silver piece of jewelry and waited for Jack’s answer with such an intense look on his face that Jack gulped. He took a cookie. It was warm and crumbly between his fingers. The scent of cinnamon and sugar seeped into the air.

He didn’t want to divulge the information that easily, because despite his appearance, he wasn’t at all a pushover. Especially not when it concerned a child. Guardian or not, children were his field of expertise. His forte. He supposed that children were probably Pitch’s forte too, but not in a good way.

“Why do you want to know?” he countered carefully. Jack wasn’t willing to just give that kind of stuff out like he was handing out free food or something. And to the Nightmare King himself - that just set off too many warning bells in his head. After all, even a changed Pitch could have some diabolical plan. Jack knew from experience that people didn’t really change that much. It was much easier to just pretend.

Pitch sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Okay, I see I’m going to have to rephrase this. You won’t tell me anything if I don’t tell you why I want to know, right?”

Jack nodded tightly in confirmation, the protective feeling swelling in his chest particularly fierce. Wild horses couldn’t drag the secret from him.

He looked irritated with Jack for a moment, but then relaxed his stiff posture, his face tired and drawn. “Jack Frost, you are every bit of the child you appear to be.” Jack crossed his arms and gave PItch the best stubborn look he had.

He sighed and rubbed his nose again. “You’re not opposed to a little backstory, are you? I must warn you - it’s rather long and tedious. And I don’t like telling it.”

“I like stories,” Jack said, piping up. It wasn’t a lie. He had always been curious about Pitch’s history, where exactly fear itself had come from. “Spill.”

“It dates so long ago I can hardly remember,” Pitch said. “I was young and impulsive. Ah, look who I’m speaking to. The very definition of young and impulsive.”

“Hey,” Jack protested after a while, too busy trying to picture a teenage version of Pitch Black. “I’m not as bad as I used to be, okay? Besides, I’m not that impulsive. And I’m not that young either - three hundred fifty years old.”

“Right,” Pitch answered, expression disbelieving. “Anyways, I was a young general, only a couple centuries old, much like yourself. The youngest in the history of the Sea of Stars, appointed by the House of Lunanoff to protect the peace, at least in our part of the universe.”

“Wait,” Jack interrupted, feeling very bemused. “What are you talking about? Sea of Stars? House of Lunanoff? Did I get knocked out for a few centuries or something and missed something or what?”

“No, nothing like that, Jack Frost. Sorry, did I forget to explain?” Pitch asked, not seeming sorry at all. “It’s just that all this is so terribly basic that I forget that you don’t know anything about it. Did you not attend a history class at all in your mortal years?”

Before Jack could argue, Pitch cut him off. “Your world is but a small part of the entire cosmos, a small haven of water and earth that a small handful of people have chosen as their home.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that,” Jack said, feeling sort of indignant at having his history knowledge criticized, of all things. “The solar system, Milky Way, the universe - really big, we’re really small. Anything else new?”

“I don’t quite think you get the perspective of things yet, Frost,” Pitch answered in a voice so casual that Jack knew he had done this before. This lecturing thing. “There are many universes, or so the scientists of my time believed, and within each millions of Constellations, each led by a different family. Human beings believe they know everything, yet they still have not proven that “alien” life exists, when it can actually be found in great abundance.

“This is what I mean by the Sea of Stars - this universe and within the Lunanoff Constellation - the center of all political matters I would like to say. But that wouldn’t be the truth. The House of Lunanoff, that is to say, the family of a close friend of yours - the Man in the Moon - govern but one major Constellation. And each Constellation, being quite large, needs an army to protect its people - that’s where I come in, as their general.”

“So... let me get this straight,” Jack said slowly. “You’re an alien. A really powerful alien. From another galaxy far, far away. And you don’t have like eight eyes or x-ray vision or anything?” Though he wasn’t exactly sure if Pitch was joking or not, he decided to just play along for the time being.

Pitch smiled. “Yes, though not a galaxy - a Constellation. And that was a horrible movie. Hardly did anything justice. We did not go around in those ridiculous suits with those horribly over exaggerated weapons. The only thing remotely accurate were the spaceships, though we sailed on airships, resembling actual boats. And to answer your question, no, I don’t have eight eyes or x-ray vision. I’m not a spider.”

“Wow,” Jack mouthed, feeling as though he were in a dream. “I’m not hallucinating, am I? This is a lot to process. A whole lot. Okay then.” In normal circumstances, maybe when he was younger, around a century old, Jack wouldn’t have believed Pitch. But by now, he was no stranger to the bizarre, and Pitch’s theory explained some things.

Besides, the look on his face - Jack could sniff out a lie, and this didn’t seem like one, even though his common sense told him otherwise. It was a good thing Jack didn’t trust his common sense that much. He looked up at the moon. He had hoped to come here and get some questions answered, but now he had many more to cope with instead. He decided to start with the one that seemed most relevant. “What was the Golden Age?”

“Ah, the Golden Age,” Pitch said, his voice soft, reminiscent. “What a monument to our power. It was the only time that the House of Lunanoff truly pushed away the darkness - a plethora of creatures attacking everything that moved and breathed. I was five hundred or so years old at the time, commanded the full might of the Golden Armies.”

“Why would you want to fight off the darkness?” Jack asked, finding so many contradictory points in Pitch’s story. Pitch, a good guy? “I thought you liked it.”

“I do,” Pitch said, without hesitation. His eyebrows suddenly furrowed in thought, his eyes narrowed and his lips drawn into a thin line, as if he had confused himself. The light and shadows cast across his face made him look like a statue from the times of ancient Greece.

“Well then,” Jack said, realizing that he was still gawking at Pitch. It was as if he had short-term memory loss or something, which wouldn’t be that surprising. In the fights between the Guardians, Pitch had hit his head pretty hard. “The Golden Armies?” Jack said, trying to prompt him back into speaking.

He cleared his throat and pressed his fingers against a temple. “Yes. The Golden Armies. Your questions never cease, do they?” If he hadn’t been annoyed with Jack earlier, he definitely was now. Maybe it was because Jack had somehow given him a severe headache.

“Together, my men and I pushed the Armies of Darkness - made up of a variety of all sorts of nasty creatures - back into the deepest recesses of the universe, where my men and I constructed a prison to hold them. There was finally peace, until - “ He paused.

“Until what?” Jack asked, riveted. He felt like a child being told a bedtime story, sitting on that chair woven of wood. ‘Something bad?” he guessed.

“Your powers of deduction are impressive, as always,” Pitch replied dryly. “Yes, something bad. I was assigned - no - I volunteered to watch the shadows, because it was an honor to serve the House of Lunanoff.” He said it sarcastically, like he couldn’t believe that he had once believed that, silently mocking himself.

“Are you still the Nightmare King?” Jack blurted, because throughout Pitch’s monologue he had wanted to ask it.

Pitch blinked. “Was there ever a time when I stopped being the Nightmare King?”

“Well, yeah, pretty much,” Jack said. “You’re not exactly evil anymore - but the Guardians don’t know that. If they knew you were back now, I think they would probably freak or something.”

Pitch’s voice was thin, as if he really didn’t want to be discussing the Guardians. “They already know, Jack. Wait, so you don’t know?” He laughed without humor. “Figures. They’re the Guardians, after all. Protective by nature. I’m not surprised they didn’t tell you.”

“What?” Jack demanded, not sure if he had heard Pitch correctly. “They already knew that you were back?”

“Yes, actually I thought North had been the last one to know. He just visited me a couple days ago, even with the Christmas rush, I believe to make sure that I wouldn’t ruin it for the children - again.” There was a smug little smile on his face.. “I have no intention of playing the Grinch again this year, but I’m not making any promises.”

“They didn’t tell me,” Jack said. He could hear the blood rushing through his head. “They didn’t tell me. I mean, how much time does it take to drop off one message? ‘Hey Jack, how ya’ doing? Just wanted to stop by and tell you that Pitch Black is back. Yeah, that guy that almost destroyed all hope, wonder, and memories, plus he wanted to plunge the world back into another Dark Age. Him. Well, anyways, have a nice day.’”

Part of him thought he was being rather unreasonable. After all, the Guardians had been busy enough, and it wasn’t as if Jack never forgot things. But it hadn’t been the first time, and he found that he could not stop himself, that he did not want to stop himself.

He laughed, feeling a little ungrounded and light-headed, like he was having a fever. “So, when Bunny said it was a good thing you weren’t back yet, he was just acting? They make up this entire ruse, treat me like I’m four years old. I’m not a kid anymore, since everyone seems to think so. The Guardians don’t need to hide anything from me just to protect me.” He laughed again.

Pitch had laced his hands together, like he was pondering something. “I don’t think that’s why the Guardians wanted to hide it from you - your age. A couple centuries is sufficient enough, and the Guardians themselves - excluding the Sandman - are hardly that much older than you. No, it’s probably because they didn’t think that you could handle the news properly.”

“Gee, thanks a lot,” Jack said in a sarcastic monotone. “You really know how to make someone feel better. I’m not able to handle it? I think I handled it just fine.”

Pitch completely disregarded Jack. “And the fact that they didn’t think you were ready for that responsibility relieves you. You’re afraid of commitment, Jack Frost, afraid of being held accountable for anything. Because if you weren’t afraid of it, that would mean that you would have lost yourself. You are so scared of straying from who you were - that incredibly annoying Guardian of Fun - that you try and stop yourself from becoming who you’re meant to become. You make yourself afraid. You make your own fear.”

Jack felt hot. “And I suppose you find this all so horribly interesting, picking me apart. Playing fucking Sherlock Holmes. What do you know? I hardly know you. I mean, you probably got that from your weird fear radar. Yeah, well, you need to get that thing checked, ‘cause you’re wrong.”

Pitch gave this small, low chuckle that seemed to make Jack’s heart beat faster, but he managed to convince himself that it was just the anger. “Look who’s in denial.”

“You know what?” Jack said. “This was a mistake. Staying here. The only reason I actually came was to get my staff. I’m gonna go.” He moved to get up, but Pitch put his hand on Jack’s forearm. Jack sighed and sat back down, crossing his arms impatiently.

“Jack,” Pitch said in a soothing voice, still smiling, like he found the whole situation amusing. “Jack - no, just forget what I said then, if it makes you feel better. And yes, my fear “radar” may as well be off. I haven’t been able to read fears properly since my defeat.” He leaned forward and brushed his fingers through Jack’s hair, his touch light and floating. Jack stilled.

Jack stiffened at the touch and then said hoarsely, “Why? Is it because - because not enough children believed in you or something like that?”

“No,” Pitch said, for some reason sounding somewhat affronted. “How powerful I am hardly depends on the number of children that believe in me. I am not a Guardian. No, it was rather the complete absence of fear that threw me off before, when I could not even sense my own fear. Now, I reckon it is because I’m weaker, though not for the reasons you presume.”

“Oh,” Jack said simply, not sure what to say otherwise.

Only then did Pitch withdraw his hand. “Sorry, but your hair is an interesting shade - it looks like freshly fallen snow. I was curious.”

“It’s alright,” Jack managed to say, his throat incredibly rough and uncooperative.

Jack frowned. He touched his temple with the tips of his fingers because his head really _did_ hurt. Before, it had only been a slight dizziness that he had blamed on his outburst. But now - the pain was on an entirely new scale.

He felt like the entire room was spinning. It was somehow tinged with darkness too and he could hardly notice the light streaming in from the window now, as if all the cheer had been sucked out of it - and what was that blurry shape coming in from the distance? It was only a minor detail in the haze of what seemed to be like a huge migraine.

“What’s wrong?” Pitch started to ask, but then he trailed off as if he felt it too. Something in Pitch’s face - the dread, how frozen to the spot he seemed - set Jack off. He lunged for his staff resting against his chair just in time - and then all hell broke loose.

The hull of a ship crashed through the glass, shattering it and sending shards of shrapnel in every direction. Without thinking, Jack sent up a huge wall of ice that erupted out of nowhere, a partial dome of sharp, honed ice. It hadn’t been  a good idea in the first place, and had his powers not been going out of whack, it would have caused even more damage. The ship broke through the massive barrier of ice as well, the wood on its side crunching up like it had been put in a blender. Now, along with boards of moldy wood, icicles as tall as telephone poles rained down from the sky. Wonderful.

Jack’s body went into survival mode. He didn’t know what he was doing, but his body did. It was as if he had done it a thousand times. The staff was dropped onto the ground. He lifted his arms and the ice, as if responding to his thoughts and movements, melted in midair in a matter of seconds into large blobs of liquid, enveloping the chunks of wood and then splashing down onto the ground more gently, wetting Jack and Pitch as well as everything else.

Pitch’s eyes were wide. Jack held up his hands and looked at them, to see if they had changed at all. Nope. They were still recognizably pale. One nail on his right hand was chipped. For a few seconds, it was so silent that Jack could hear his heartbeat.

“How?” Pitch mouthed, but then he shook his head as if to say never mind, we’ll talk about it later. After all, they had other things to worry about. There was something distinctively moving in the wrecked ship, of which almost an entire side had been shredded off. From there emerged the ugliest creature Jack had ever seen.

It looked like a cross between a zombie and a pirate. It’s skin was ashen and a large chunk of its face was missing, partially covered by an eyepatch and a tilted, old-fashioned pirate’s hat. A sword hung loosely by its side. It jumped out from the ship, dropping thirty feet - easy. It’s ankles, upon landing, bent in a way that ankles shouldn’t bend. It’s figure looked like the skin was strapped together to contain the flesh or else it would fall apart.

“Oh, he’s a powerful one,” a voice cackled, nasally and gurgling. It sounded like a zombie that could talk. Once the speaker moved out from the shadows, the hole in the hull, Jack realized that maybe zombie was a perfectly correct word to describe it. “They’re always the tastiest.”

“Yes,” it hissed, shuffling awkwardly towards Jack. “I think I’ll enjoy you - frostling.” The pirate wasn’t the worst part - it was the passengers. Masses of shadowy figures erupted from the hole like it was a volcano, hands, feet, pirate hats. They weren’t as distinct and recognizable as their leader, but Jack could definitely identify them as one species, if he had known what they were.

As it gradually moved closer, Jack felt like he could not breathe, like the air had been drained out of his lungs. It constricted his heart, and he soon realized his power. He could barely draw upon his frost, for what had meant to be a bolt of frost lightning came out as a few blue sparkles. Just enough to properly send chills down the pirate’s back. Real threatening. Confused, he shot a brief look at Pitch.

“Don’t worry, young frostling. It won’t hurt - much.” It laughed, and turned towards Pitch, who had somehow gotten his hands on a golden - was that a rapier? If anyone else but Pitch had been dressed in dark robes, holding a sword that looked like it had been casted maybe in the seventeenth century, Jack would have found it funny.

Turning towards Pitch and smirking like he had thought of a good point, the pirate said, “Reminds of Seraphina, does he not, General? Now I understand why you keep him here. She was a tasty one, too.” It gurgled again, like it had made a particularly clever joke.

Pitch didn’t seem to think so. His eyes narrowed and his lips contorted into a grim line. He looked murderous as he charged towards the pirate, if murderers could still be graceful. It was as if gravity no longer applied to him. Unfortunately, he was soon apprehended by eager opponents, the zombie-pirate’s evil minions.

They seemed to envelope Pitch with their shadows, so dark and - well - pitch black that it made even Pitch Black panic. But it was weird. An abnormal amount of fear flashed through his eyes - and Jack understood, because Pitch had been possessed by the shadows before, and this must have gotten pretty darn close to reliving that nightmare. The wannabe zombie-pirate-shadow things formed an inverted whirlpool around him, obscuring him from view.

Just when Jack thought that it was possible Pitch had been defeated, the shadows drew back with disappointment for in the very center, the eye of the storm, the place where Pitch had been shortly before was clear. There was no sign of him. And that made Jack realize with startling suddenness that he was completely and utterly alone.

Jack had been so entranced by Pitch that he had forgotten his own perils. It was so close now that Jack could smell the rotting flesh it called a mouth, the stench making him gag. It inhaled, and Jack felt like every bit of hope he had leave him, like water down a shower drain. His shoulders slumped.  

“Delicious,” the pirate murmured again, licking his lips as if Jack was a gourmet meal, “I haven’t had a meal in two thousand years - and what better than one so vulnerable, yet with such raw power. And he doesn’t even know how to use it yet - what a waste..” He was immobilized, a swimmer unable to keep his head above water any longer.

Jack closed his eyes, letting the darkness wash over him like music. He felt strangely drowsy, like he would enjoy nothing more than a nap. He slumped and then fell to his knees.

“Jack,” someone was calling faintly. Jack ignored it like an irksome fly, but its pestersome buzzing wouldn’t go away. It came again, louder and more insistent. “Jack Frost, you need  to listen to me.”

Whoever was trying to wake him up, Jack found them incredibly rude. “Sleepy,” he mumbled, “Come back in five minutes.” He wished it had a snooze button, because it didn’t seem to shut up.

“Jack,” it said again, calm and level-headed, “I know this is difficult, but I need you to open your eyes. Now. Or you aren’t going to like how things turn out.” The voice sounded incredibly familiar, but as he was half-asleep and increasingly incoherent, he couldn’t quite make it out.

He tried opening his eyes. He found that he couldn’t. Alarm flooded through him, signalling flashing warning bells in his head. He forced them open with effort and blinked twice to clear off a film that had settled on the surface, muddling colors and skewing objects. Pitch was a blur of gold and black, slicing pirates in half with his slender sword that emitted such a fine sound akin to a flute.

_Pitch?_ Jack thought curiously. _How did he escape the shadows?_

He was still too far away. The pirate swiveled his head around, which seemed to twist back and almost topple off. Its eyes were dead. There was no expression in them at all, and that was when Jack knew that the pirate wouldn’t hesitate to torture him, to kill him. In fact, it would probably be the opposite, judging from the look on the zombie-pirate’s face - like a cat cornering a mouse.

There was a pain in his shoulder, for the briefest of moments. But then Jack could feel nothing in it at all, so he took no notice of it. Instead, something snapped within Jack, something that he had been holding back decided to surface, flooding out of him until the very power he harnessed shook his very core. The ground shook. His body coursed with adrenaline still even though everything else had gone silent.

There were cracks in the ground everywhere. The zombie-pirate was suspended four feet from the ground, held up by three jagged spikes of rock that dwarfed Jack. “What happened?” he asked warily, unable to take his eyes off of the dead pirate.

Or maybe not so dead.

“There are more of us,” the pirate rasped, sounding like it was choking - on what, Jack preferred not to think about. He turned his glassy eyes on Jack, as if considering him. “They will come for you, Jack Frost, now that you have so eagerly made yourself a target. And you as well, Pitchiner.” It pulled its decaying lips up into a half-grimace, half-smile.

It’s head turned toward Jack, tilting awkwardly. “People more powerful than myself are after him and they show no mercy. Especially not to you. But of course, you know that already. It would have been better just to let me kill him, General.” It brought its arm up in a mock salute and then fell limp, dangling there as helplessly as a ragdoll as if it had never been alive in the first place.

“Dream pirates,” Pitch said with distaste. “I hate them, stealthy little leeches. They take everything inherently good they can get their hands on - hope, camaraderie, joy, anything. They bring about this depressing air; I thought I recognized it.”

“You weren’t lying,” Jack said dazedly. “Dream pirates and all that stuff - Constellations, aliens - they all exist?”

Pitch studied him carefully for a few more moments and then his eyes widened in alarm as it came to rest near Jack’s chest. “Shit,” he cursed, closing the distance between him and Jack and smoothed over Jack’s shoulder with his thumb carefully. When Jack did not respond with more than a confused look, he looked ever more dismayed.

“What’s wrong?” Jack repeated slowly, having never seen Pitch act like this either. He was just full of surprises nowadays, wasn’t he? That he was more concerned about someone who was perfectly fine now  than the new, deceased centerpiece of his sitting room was beyond Jack.

“You’re bleeding,” Pitch said, looking worried. “And you don’t seem to feel anything either. A numbing agent - only a few known cases.” He looked at the wound like he had been a doctor his whole life.

He took one more look at Pitch’s face and then started laughing. “You’re screwing with me. I’m not bleeding,” Jack said. “I mean, come on, I think I would know if…”

Jack trailed off, because then he saw that the tips of Pitch’s fingertips that had been pale just seconds ago were now stained a brilliant crimson, carefully groomed hands made unclean.  “Wait...what? So it wasn’t some sort of weird dream or something?”

Pitch stared at him blankly, but he didn’t seem surprised that Jack would think so. “No, it was a dream pirate. Big difference. And it was the dream pirate - their leader. It’s bad news that he’s back in business. I think he bit you - this is bad.”

“So?” Jack said, not sure why Pitch was overreacting like this, trying to act like he wasn’t anxious. “Is it like an old fashioned zombie movie or something - I get bitten and I’m gonna turn into one too?”

“No,” Pitch said with disgust. “Definitely not. That’s a Hollywood concept.”

“Then why are you so worried?” Jack demanded. “You were a general right? I thought wounds were pretty typical for that job.”

“This isn’t typical,” Pitch said. When Jack gawked at him some more, he gestured towards Jack’s shoulder lightly, not touching it,  as if he was afraid he would damage it. “Look,” he said gently.

Jack had been afraid to look down, but something in Pitch’s tone told him to follow the instructions. If only he had done that in school. He did, eyes tracing the line to where Pitch’s eyes rested.

He saw. “Shit,” he said, looking at the gaping hole in his shoulder where a piece of flesh should have been. “How did I miss that?” It was red in the center, but where it met skin the edges were stained with black. The obvious teeth marks in some areas made Jack feel a little squeamish. The pirate had ripped a hole in Jack’s sweatshirt to get through to his skin, and now much of the right side of the garment had been stained with blood.

“Why doesn’t it hurt?” Jack asked conversationally, feeling detached. This wound couldn’t be his. Jack Frost, the spirit that never got hurt. Who fell hundreds of feet from the sky and didn’t break a single bone, only to get up and do it again.

“The dream pirate secretes a sedative into its prey,” Pitch said. “Imagine the primitive form of morphine, cruder and more dangerous. You can’t feel it, but it should start hurting - oh - right about now, if my predictions are accurate. You may want to brace yourself - this is going to sting.”

“You couldn’t have told me that first?” Jack asked cynically. He held his breath, waiting, hoping that Pitch had been wrong, for once. Time seemed to tick by slower now that he knew.

Jack doubled over. Pitch had been right. Damn. The pain in his shoulder grew from a one to a full-blown ten, so much that he couldn’t breathe. He grasped at his shoulder and gave Pitch as withering look as he could manage as his knees buckled and he fell senseless to the floor.

* * *

Someone was cleaning his wound and it hurt. The benign dabs of a towel against it felt like he was being pushed shoulder-first into an open flame. He wanted to tell them to stop civilly, but no words sprung to him. His vocal cords were nowhere to be found.

It stopped, and someone ran their hand through his hair again. He quieted down, though the pain did not. It was no matter, now that it was bearable.

"You are a proper idiot, Jack Frost,” the voice chided. Amused and weary all rolled into one. “Zombie, indeed.”

_Who is Jack Frost?_ he thought numbly, as the pain fired up again. Because he did sound rather stupid. He was glad he wasn’t him, even if he wasn’t sure exactly who he was.

The hardest part of remembering, he realized, was forgetting. That would have sounded deep if he hadn’t been so damn tired. Sleep found him soon after that again.

* * *

The next time things stopped spinning, he could think again. He opened his eyes and as they came into focus, Jack wasn’t exactly sure where he was. At least, he remembered Pitch, but this looked nothing like it had.

It was bright and french doors, glassy and gleaming, opened up to another darker hallway. He was lying down on a bed, covered in white and blue sheets, smooth to the touch. Snowflakes, synthetic most likely, fluttered down from the ceiling. Jack caught one in the palm of his hand and it disappeared.

He sat up, or at least tried to. His shoulder hurt so much that it felt like it was being wrenched out of its socket; Jack bit his lip and then regretted the angry red indentations his teeth made. The burning subsided, became only a dull ache if he didn’t move it.

Speaking of the bite, it was now covered by his old sweatshirt - except that the hole he had sworn had been there was now gone, mended back into the faultless blue of before. There was a glass of water with exactly three cubes of ice in it on an oaken night table beside his bed. Colorful paintings blanketed the walls. They depicted winter mostly - snow, frozen rivers and lakes, cheerful little windows lit against a world of white. A small bookshelf and blue armchair rested in the corner, of which a fire flickered within a glassy fireplace nearby.

It was so homely that Jack could have sworn it had been designed especially for himself. Hotel a la Jack Frost and all that. All he needed now was some caviar and room service and he’d be good.

Just then, Pitch strode in, pushing open the doors with an I-own-this-place air. Well, he probably did. Oh well. Technicalities. He took one look at Jack and then turned away, his golden eyes blank as a clean slate. Jack wondered, because if someone was that good at controlling their expression, they had to have something to hide.

“So you’re not going to say hi or say that I’m awake?” Jack asked, feeling not as much irritated that he was being ignored as intrigued. “Where are your manners?”

Pitch gave him an aporetic look. “I believe that stating the obvious is merely a waste of breath, and that formalities are overrated, Jack Frost. I have questions more wanting of answers. For example: how does this room appear to you?”

“What do you mean?” Jack said, taken aback. He had expected Pitch to chide, to yell, or most likely to keep the speaking to a minimum.

“This room was designed by the Tsar Lunanoff himself. It changes its form based on the individual within, gauging their likes and dislikes, personality, and so on,” Pitch explained. He gave Jack a thin smile. “Indulge me, for once, Frost. I would like to know.”

Jack leaned back on what seemed like a mountain of cushions and observed the room one last time. “It’s really blue. And it’s snowing in here, for some reason.  There are snowflakes on the wallpaper and on the paintings. Wait - is that my sister?” He peered at one of the pieces of art, and found that the brown-haired child ice-skating resembled his deceased sister closely.

“Your sister?” Pitch asked, voice softer now. “The one you saved?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, voice suddenly hoarse. “Yeah, that’s the one.” He did not stop to think that it was odd that Pitch knew.

“That you should see her here does not surprise me,” Pitch said softly. “I myself see something rather similar, without the snow, of course.”

“What do you see?” Jack said, thinking that he already knew the answer. Pitch did not reply, as Jack knew he would not. The contents of that locket seemed to surface everywhere.

There was another silence, though comfortable this time, without any oppressive air. Pitch sipped coffee from a mug, the scent permeating through the air, shedding its warmth in the form of transparent mist.

Jack decided to pipe up in his least aggressive voice, because he knew this would be a request difficult for Pitch to comply with. “You never finished your story.”

“Oh,” Pitch said, in a tone that conveyed that he already knew but was hoping that Jack wouldn’t ask. “Right.” He cleared his throat and sat down in an armchair that had suddenly appeared, red and elegant just like everything else he owned. It was probably from the room that Pitch saw.

“As I said, something bad happened next - I fell in love.” He finished the sentence as if condemning himself to some horrible crime.

“I’m not sensing the bad yet,” Jack said, trying to keep his face austere still. “So you fell in love. Wow. No wonder you became the Nightmare King. That must be a violation of intergalactic law.”

Pitch did not smile. “I have not finished my story yet, Frost. If you had known the things that I’ve done, perhaps you would view me in a different light - I am not as harmless like you believe me to be.”

“I don’t think you’re _harmless_.” Jack said. “Actually, I don’t know a single person who thinks you’re _harmless_ , on Earth or whatever Constellation there is. I mean, you’re Pitch Black. Not exactly the average stuffed animal.”

Pitch  did not look convinced, but he  took a deep breath, his chest rising and then falling. “We had a child, before I went to guard the Prison of Horrors. Jam-packed with Nightmare Men, Fearlings, and Dream Pirates.”

“Must have been a nice job,” Jack muttered, “considering the name.”

“Yes, it was a nice job as well. Keeping the committers of the worst atrocities all in one place, and expecting them to behave. I took it into stride however, at first. But as time went on, I began to miss the rest of my family, especially my daughter. But the shadows are cruel. Cooped up in their prison, they decided to attack any weakness they could find. Unfortunately, it was mine. They pretended to be my daughter, Jack, they took her voice and mutilated it. I believed she was in dire danger, did not stop to wonder why she was in a place billions of light years away, only that she was in danger.”

Pitch paused, as if to make sure that Jack was still listening. He was. “They possessed me, used me as a tool to escape and then realized - with the general of the Golden Armies under their control, they could easily take the entire Constellation of Lunanoff and gradually more. That was the beginning of the - no, my - reign of terror on the children of Earth.”

“And then you spread nightmares to pretty much every child on Earth,” Jack said, trying to even out the shocking amounts of self-loathing. “I knew that already. Actually, I see you differently now - but I don’t think you’re the Nightmare King anymore. You didn’t like try to kill me or anything.”

Pitch’s face grew dark. “I shortened the story for sake of your attention span, which I’m beginning to believe hardly reaches two seconds. You still have scarcely any idea of what I did to the people of Lunanoff. I killed the Tsar and Tsarina of Lunanoff, the very people I had dedicated my life to protect. I killed friends, colleagues, erased them for all eternity without a second thought. I didn’t just spread nightmares at first - no, I needed to instill fear into them. I tortured them, children barely able to toddle around on their own feet - and still I could easily do the same to you.”

Jack held his breath, his heart pounding. Pitch’s golden eyes were sharper than ever, making him feel like he was being dissected under its gaze.

“It is dangerous to wander in my waters, Jack Frost. Even now, I can tell that you fear me, with my senses impaired. Even now, at my weakest point, I could easily make you wish you had never been born into this world. You are playing in a minefield, and perhaps you are only steps away from getting blown up.” It sounded like a warning.

His heart seemed to leap up right into his throat.

“And there seems to be no other way to get you to stay away than to terrify you, Jack Frost, because you are so terribly blatant that one day it’ll get you killed.” Pitch’s voice then became softer. “You are right, of course, that I am not the same person I was fifty years ago. I still enjoy making you fear me, making children fear me, only that I am more unpredictable now. Time has taught me that even if I ran to the ends of the earth, I could not escape who I was - who I still am.”

“But if you like making me afraid,” Jack said, his voice small,  “then why do you want me to go?”

The molten gold in Pitch’s eyes seemed to solidify, turning hard and cold. “I take pleasure in fear, Jack. I am still the Nightmare King, whether or not you choose to believe so. If I were to lose to the shadows again, I am not so sure that I would be able to take control. And this is why, Jack Frost, you are so stupid. I am in recovery and then you wander in, tempting me with your fear. You realize that I could so easily hurt you and - frost lightning or not - you wouldn’t be able to do a thing.”

“I think I could take you,” Jack said, trying to joke. Pitch still looked stony. “Fine, I’ll leave then, if you’re so convinced that I can’t protect myself from you when you can’t even control your own shadows.” He tried to lift himself off the bed, only he didn’t take into account his shoulder. It gave out and he fell back again pathetically..

Pitch seemed exasperated. “You are an idiot, Jack Frost. I can’t stay angry at someone who continuously makes a fool of himself. And for some reason - maybe that I committed some heinous crime in a past life - I’m stuck with you. I don’t think you’ll be able to leave for a couple of days without getting yourself injured - again.” He looked pointedly at the place where the dream zombie had taken a chunk out. “Since I can’t get rid of you now, rest, or - I know it’s unthinkable but - read a book. I think that’s what people do when they’re bored.” With that, he left.

“Great,” Jack mumbled, flopping over on the pillows and staring aimlessly at the white ceiling, as dramatic an action as his shoulder would allow. Snow stuck to his face and froze into gleaming crystals at the touch of his skin. “I feel real welcome.”

He sighed. His head was clear, for once. All he could feel was a sensation of uselessness. If someone had told him a couple decades ago that one day he would be nursed back to health by his old friend Pitch, he would have laughed. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He decided to take Pitch’s advice. With much difficulty, Jack extracted himself from beneath the covers and lumbered towards a bookshelf in the corner of the room. Once or twice, his shoulder burned so much that he had to prop himself against the wall, panting.

The oaken bookshelf held but a few novels, their binding still pristine. Jack took a book in hand that seemed the thinnest, weighing the mass in the palm of his hand. “Inferno di Dante,” he read. It had a plain cover, red with black, foreboding letters and flames stenciled in around the edges.

The book was worn. Years of friction had rounded its edges and yellowed its pages. When Jack flipped it open, he soon realized that the entire thing was in Italian, neat stanza after stanza, and scrawled next to each in dark pen was the English translation. Though he could read the Italian, he found the translations eloquent enough that he preferred their style to the original.

> _When I had journeyed halfway through life’s journey,_
> 
> _I soon found myself within shadowed woods,_
> 
> _for I had lost the right path - that does not stray._

It was a haunting tale. Jack found himself so sufficiently absorbed that he read and read and read, and that was how Pitch found him hours later, devouring the last line in

> _Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars._

In his hand, Pitch held a steaming cup of hot chocolate that Jack accepted gratefully. He took a sip. When there was some residue chocolate, Pitch leaned forward and slowly drew his pinky finger along Jack’s lips. Jack stopped breathing. Pitch put his finger in his mouth, licked the chocolate off, and then proceeded to act like nothing had happened.

“What?” he asked, when he noticed Jack staring.

Jack shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing. Sorry.”

“Wait, let me get this straight - are you reading?” Pitch asked as Jack struggled to catch his breath again, sounding so shocked that Jack was immediately offended. He started chuckling, which only added to the feeling.

“Hey, I read,” Jack protested. When Pitch didn’t stop, Jack began to feel increasingly incensed. “Seriously. Is that so hard to picture?”

Pitch raised an eyebrow.. “If you really want my opinion, yes it is. Never in a million years did I expect to see you pick up a book. An actual book.” He peered down at the words and seemed to recognize the format. “And Italian poetry at that.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I can read Italian. I had enough time to learn - two centuries, actually. I lived in Europe for a while. Guess you could say that I’m well-traveled.” When Jack flashed a grin at Pitch, he did not smile back, like he found some double meaning that wasn’t meant to be laughable.

Pitch cleared his throat. “Actually, I came here to ask you something,” he said. “It’s about the dream pirates - when you created that wall of ice - and then made it melt. Have you always been able to do that?”

“No,” Jack replied honestly. “I don’t know what happened.” His mind flashed back to the girl in the tree and decided to keep quiet for the moment.

“Hmm,” Pitch mused. “Do you think that you could repeat it? Could you do it again? It’s interesting to observe.”

Jack looked down. He didn’t know. There was no rush of power this time, no tingling, no tell tale signs that he was about to destroy something again. He look at Pitch and morosely shrugged.

Pitch looked thoughtful. When he did not respond, Jack cleared his throat. “Well, anyways, Why did the dream pirates attack you?”

“Us,” Pitch corrected. ” His expression was dark. “For some reason, you were a target too. I would understand if they came for only me, but they actually seemed to want you as well. Now that they know you’re here, they’ll come back. You’ll have to leave soon - back to the Workshop, or any place that’s safe, really.”

“What about you?” Jack asked.

“I’m perfectly capable of defending myself, Jack,” Pitch said, a small smile on his face. “You hardly need to worry about me. I’d be more focused on getting better, if I were you.”

“You can come with me, though,” Jack said, ignoring Pitch. “You can come with me to the Workshop - I know I can make North understand. Bunny definitely won’t, but it doesn’t matter. It isn’t even his house. North’s always talking about his state-of-the-art security. The dream pirates won’t be able to get in.”

“Jack,” Pitch said gently. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to go stay with the Guardians. Besides, you’re in no condition to travel at the moment. So, for now, just rest, and then we can be out of each other’s hair, alright?”

He stood up left - again, his robes flaring up like black flames. Pitch had a thing for dramatic exits.

His staff was resting against the window. He placed the book on the windowsill. Jack got to his feet carefully,and then reached for it, instantly feeling much better as it lay in his hands, fitting perfectly in the space between his thumb and index finger, into the rough calluses there from holding its grooved wood.

Jack stared at the book a couple of feet away and frowned, because something wasn’t right. The room was customized for Jack. Pitch hadn’t been able to see what Jack saw in it - so how had he seen the book? As he considered it, Jack began to think that he knew why. Because in Dante - a character seeking to escape the shadows, to reach for the world that he belonged in, even if he had to go through seemingly endless layers of Hell  - Pitch found himself. Jack wondered what else Pitch saw in the room - he would put his money on more Renaissance art.

The smile fading from his face, Jack sank back into the armchair as the guilt ate at him, wondering if he should tell Pitch that his dead daughter wasn’t dead after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading.
> 
> Review!
> 
> (Or leave a kudos. Or bookmark this. Or leave me a message telling me this chapter sucked. Or not. That would be nice. Something.)
> 
> -flying

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for bearing with me. Please, leave a note at the end or your kudos. That always makes me feel better.


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